


Orbit

by Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Boltcutters are the new symbol of the Citadel, F/M, Forehead Touching, Gen, Healing, Keeper of the Seeds is Max's newest ghost, Max is not good at having Feels, Miss Giddy is the tattoo artist of the Citadel, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Movie(s), Recovery, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 35,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4002001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max thought he'd never want to see the Citadel again. And yet here he is and he isn't sure why. Furiosa greets him like this was always the plan, like he is one of her scouts. She looks strong and healthy again, recovered from her wound. Perhaps that is what he came to see?</p><p>He tells himself: 'One day. Supplies and water and food'. And then 'Maybe a night rest'.</p><p>Three days later he drives away, determined not to return.</p><p>(Three months later the Citadel comes into sight again)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I prompted this at the Mad Max Kink meme, and then I started writing it, and ah well. Here we are.

Max thought he'd never want to see the Citadel again. He doesn't exactly have a habit of returning to places where he was held captive and tortured.

He doesn't have a habit of returning anywhere at all.

And yet here he is and he isn't sure why. Furiosa greets him like this was always the plan, like he is one of her scouts. She looks strong and healthy again, recovered from her wound. Perhaps that is what he came to see?

He tells himself: 'One day. Supplies and water and food'. And then 'Maybe a night rest'.

Three days later he drives away, determined not to return.

 

Three months later the Citadel comes into sight again. He inexplicably traded for some small Aloe plants (why?) and then decided it would be a waste to keep them in his car when they could grow big at the Citadel. This reasoning made sense until he is getting out of his car at the base of the Citadel.

Toast is called by the sentries, and she nods to let him in. Then she leads him to Furiosa, only slanting him a curious look at the careful way he cradles the small bag with soil and two little plants.

Furiosa's mouth ticks up when he awkwardly hands them over, and somehow that makes it all worth it.

"Things here look good," he says, because they do. They've mostly recovered from the attacks they suffered not long after Joe was killed.

The people look better fed, and there is an industrious feel to the Citadel, a sense of purpose. She leads him around, obviously proud of the changes they have wrought in half a year or so. The gardens on the top of the Citadel are lush and green, and groups of War Boys are occupied with digging and installing an irrigation system.

"We're going to start seeding down there," she gestures down to the open space next to the Citadel, where a small section of the desert has been roped off and dug over.

His eyebrows rise. She means to eke useful ground out of the desert? Can such a thing be done?

"The Vuvalini have lore on how to do it. Cheedo is going to try."

They arrive in the part of the gardens where Cheedo is working. Cheedo the Fragile, he remembers, but she no longer seems fragile at all. She directs a team of workers, her back strong, her hair tied back, her hands purposeful as they dig in the soil. She rises to greet them, receives the two small plants with pleasure.

"Thank you, Max. These will do great here," she says, and he draws in a quick breath on hearing his name. It's OK that they know it. It's OK. It's safe.

"You want a room?" Furiosa offers when they've wandered toward the well and taken a drink of clean, fresh water. The Citadel had temporary rooms for visiting trade partners and allies. She sounds like she already knows his answer, so he doesn't bother giving one. "Or you can crash in the work room again."

She's kept Joe's suite of rooms, because in the beginning nobody else dared to live there. Her sleeping quarters are in the smaller room, and there is a larger space, formerly Joe's grand room, with a corner where she works out supplies and trades, keeps important papers and books. The rest of the large room is where community meetings and hearings are held. The suite is busy in the day, but Furiosa's private space after sundown. It's far up enough to be a quiet haven at night, and it locks from the inside.

Not that he's ever going to sleep through a night, but it might be the closest he's come.

He inclines his head in thanks. The shadows are already lengthening, and it won't be long before he can use the room.

 

Furiosa has business to attend to, and he makes his own way to the kitchens, where they feed him generously and without hesitation. He's not sure if word was sent ahead of him or if this is just the kind of place the Citadel has become.

He's not sure if he could believe that second option. That's not how the world works.

After he's eaten the cook directs him to the communal wash room. It's high up, with a tank of almost fresh water and cups to pour it with, and a newly built system of water catching trays. It allows you to wash with minimal waste of water. The trays bring the water into a reservoir where people are washing clothes. From there it is collected to be filtered and lead to the hydroponics garden.

He'd forgotten how good it feels to wash the dust off his body. When he's done, somebody shows him the wash boards, and he spends a good hour standing in a damp room dressed in only his damp underwear, scrubbing years of hard living from his clothes.

Strategical oversight: it's night, and he'll be lucky if his clothes are dry by morning. Sleeping in them won't be pleasant. Should have waited until morning so they could dry in the sun. Nonetheless he's pleased with his work, a cold night is worth being clean for. He finally heads to Furiosa's quarters dressed in his damp clothes.


	2. Chapter 2

She is in the community room, dressed in loose trousers and a thin sleeveless top, her prosthetic off. Her feet are bare. It takes him by surprise somehow, seeing her with her armour down. He might have expected her to look softer, but the coiled power still simmers under her skin like he remembers, just looser somehow, easier.

He can still vividly remember the first moment he really saw her face close enough to take it in. He'd been crazed, desperate to get away, and she had pinned him to the ground, her face looming over him. That fucking muzzle blocked part of his sight, but he remembers taking in the dark engine grease smeared on her forehead against the sunlight, the grim expression, the scream of rage when the shotgun wouldn't fire and blow his head off.

 

He must have been staring, because she snaps her fingers to get his attention.

"Drying rack over there. I'll get you a blanket."

He shakes his head to snap his thoughts to the present, realises she means he should hang up his clothes and sleep naked. He hasn't done that in... he can't remember if he ever did. He doesn't even know if he can. It seems far too vulnerable if anything happens in the night.

"Here," she says, tossing him a folded up blanket. He reflexively catches it. It's a little ragged but clean.

"Pick a spot, I won't be here long," she gestures at the big seating cushions laid out in a circle.

She goes to the lit lamp in the corner and a large tray with mechanical parts. She's obviously working on something here before she goes to sleep herself. He feels a strange urge to tell her to stay, not to let his presence here disturb her routine. It feels like a strange... honour? To be allowed to see this part of her.

He doesn't... it would be... he's only--

"Don't need to move for me," he grunts, dragging some of the cushions together against the wall away from the window and the entrance, only a few metres from where she works. It would be the most strategic spot in an empty room and her presence somehow doesn't change that.

He observes her when she clamps a part between her knees and deftly unscrews something, and then he hangs most of his clothes on the rack.

Clad in only his underwear, he wraps the blanket around himself and lays with his back to the wall on the cushions. Even stranger than sleeping unclothed is sleeping without his boots on. He puts them next to his bed, and he sees Furiosa look at the leg brace that's attached to his left boot.

A small sound of surprised comfort escapes him as he settles on the softest surface he's laid down on in forever. In the glow of the oil lamp he sees Furiosa's lips quirk, her gaze never straying from her work.

The silence stretches out in long, slow breaths, in the gentle clanks of Furiosa moving parts around and installing them together. He watches her through half-lidded eyes, drifting comfortably somewhere between sleep and awakeness.

It's the most restful he can remember feeling, safe and comfortable and with the sounds of her presence keeping the dead at bay.

 

He is drawn to wakefulness at some point by a soft huff of frustration. When he opens his eyes, she is trying to hold two small parts in place with the stump of her arm while she tries to screw them together. One of the parts keeps sliding away.

"Want a hand?"

She makes an irritated noise in her throat, perhaps at the parts, perhaps at waking him (perhaps at the sleep-muzzy stupidity of offering her a hand) but then she nods.

He moves over to sit on a cushion next to her, still wrapped in his blanket. What she has on the tray is most of a mechanical hand. She's working on the fingers.

"New one?"

"Additional one," she nods, putting the parts in his hand and showing him how to hold them together. "The one I've got works, but it's _heavy_."

And powerful. He remembers feeling the thick metal fingers digging into his ankle as she stopped him from falling under the wheels. He also remembers the welts on her skin from the harness and the metal parts, and the way she'd take it off the moment she felt safe enough to do so.

"Sometimes you want a shovel, and sometimes you want a spoon," she shrugs, leaning in close to adjust the parts in his grip. "Thought I'd try making one."

He grunts in acknowledgement, distracted by the sight of her long neck bent over so close to him, the scent of her skin. Their shoulders press together warmly. She has her nub against his hands to hold them exactly where she needs them while she handily places tiny screws and puts them into place.

Immortan Joe's brand is on the nape of her neck, and he has a strange urge to rub his thumb over it, wishing he could smooth that ugliness from her skin.

She keeps adding tiny parts to his hold, and when the finger is put together, she rights herself, rolling her neck a little to ease the tension out. He clenches his hand so he won't reach out and touch her, cup the back of her head like he did once when she was bleeding out. He remembers being astonished at how she fit in his hand, all her power and presence contained by a body that isn't as large as it had seemed to him then.

"Thank you. I'll stop keeping you awake now."

He examines the delicately articulated finger, not sure how to say that he didn't mind at all. He is strangely reluctant for this moment to end.

"You're good at this."

"Didn't start out working on the war rig," she shrugs. "If you want I can have a look at your leg brace tomorrow."

He fights his first impulse of deny and deflect, and shrugs noncommittally. It really wouldn't hurt to have some skilled eyes look the thing over, it rattles and it's about as comfortable as a hastily put together brace of scrap metal can be expected to be. And that was before he ever came near the Citadel.

She puts the tray aside and rolls to her feet. At the suite door she puts a heavy metal bar over the brackets, blocking anybody from coming in. He wonders if she does it every night or if it's for his benefit.

"Good night." She disappears behind the curtain in the doorway of the small room that's her private space.

"An' you," he grunts, returning to his makeshift bed.

 


	3. Chapter 3

He's learned to wake up quiet from his nightmares – not to call any attention to himself. But wake up he does, hand scrabbling for a blade, already half on his feet. He stills when he catches himself, shakes his head, hoping to dislodge the bloody image seared on his retinas. Then he rises all the way. Furiosa doesn't seem to have woken by his nightmare; he hears her deep, slow breathing behind the curtain, and he leans against the outside of the doorframe, letting the sound soothe him. When he catches himself dozing off standing like that, he gives in and drags his bedding over.

 

Furiosa doesn't remark on his relocating to just outside her door overnight. She just retreats for a moment so he can put on his clammy but mostly dry trousers and his thin undershirt, and then she shares an early breakfast with him of thin salty soup and the nutritious if tasteless bean paste that feeds the Citadel and most of the Wretched.

She doesn't ask him about his plans, which is a mercy, because he doesn't have any. He's still wondering what he's doing here, constantly thinking about driving away and yet enjoying these quiet moments with her too much to bring up supplies and repairs and leaving.

"You can make use of Marra's chopshop if your ride needs fixing," she offers finally, after they've shared their meal in comfortable silence. "You are welcome here as long as you like, but if you wanna go, talk to Toast about supplies."

He makes an acknowledging sound.

"And come say goodbye this time."

He hums a little guiltily. The first time he visited her, he'd just left, not really considering that she might care. Now he's beginning to understand that it matters.

She returns to her sleeping room to get dressed in her normal clothes. He hears the buckles of her boots and the clanking of her prosthetic, and then looks at his leg brace. It goes against his instincts, but here is somebody who has both skill and supplies.

Somebody he maybe trusts not to screw him over with the knowledge of his weaknesses.

He holds out boot and brace to show her, when she comes back out.

She examines it closely, then makes him put it on so she can see the motion it supports.

"Hmm, least we can do is pad it and make it move better," she muses. "I'll pick up some things today, we can look at it tonight?"

He realises that despite the restlessness and the offer of supplies, he has no intention of leaving today, so he nods.

 

Max spends most of the day in the shop, coaxing his car back into the best possible state. There are War Boys around working on a small fleet of bikes, but they avoid him, apparently not sure what to expect from him. He can see the changes Furiosa is attempting to instill in them; less casual violence toward eachother and the Wretched, for one.

When Marra, one of the only two Vuvalini to survive the ride to the Citadel, walks into the shop, she gets respectful gestures from the war boys. She inspects their work on the bikes, and they follow her orders.

When she spots him at work on his car, she comes over.

"How you doing, boy?" she gives him a wide grin. "Need anythin' for that car 'o yours?"

He grunts in acknowledgement. "Marra."

"Turret gun? Flamethrowers? Harpoon gun? Could do you a fine set of parachute brakes," she's still grinning, and he pretends to consider it.

"Be okay, thanks," he finally says.

"Suit yourself, boy-o."

She turns back to her bike and a set of war boys who look like they're considering asking for parachute brakes. Max slides back under his car and grins to himself.

 

He watches work crews for a while once he's done with the car. Where Immortan Joe would let water spill down from three high outlets, wasting most of it, work crews have closed off two pipes and made a channel for the third. The water spills from it at much lower volume, running down the channel to a large cistern the Wretched have access to.

They, in turn, look better. Soon he will be thinking of them as 'the people,' like Furiosa does.


	4. Chapter 4

Dinner is the same thin, salty soup everybody eats with every meal – clever thinking, actually. All the salt and water needed in a day right there in the meals. Plus the same bean paste, though for the evening meal he gets a piece of root vegetable and some green spicy sauce to liven it up. He has no doubt old Joe ate better, but old Joe made no effort to feed everybody.

He has a seat at the table with Furiosa, the Vuvalini Marra and Eir, and the Sisters (no longer the Wives, no longer defined by Joe but by the bonds they chose for themselves). It's a strange sort of reunion. There are too many people for him to be at ease, but sitting hip to hip with Furiosa on the crowded bench somehow makes it easier. She doesn't speak much, either.

They talk to him freely, seemingly content to let him stick to grunts and one word answers. He learns that The Dag is now called Dagne, and her daughter, a healthy, goodnatured baby, is Angharad. He learns that Toast and Capable are beginning to take over the ruling of Citadel from Furiosa. They are ready now that the new situation is beginning to settle and peace has been made with Bullet Farm and Gas Town.

He is not surprised; he'd never taken Furiosa for the kind of person to spend her days patiently listen to grievances. She's a creature of the open road, much like him, and he understands she's going to be what amounts to the Citadel's general.

"So that she can jump on a bike and go patrol when she's going a little stir crazy," Marra says with a grin.

"Mm, good idea," Max grunts, and Furiosa digs her elbow into his ribs, causing the table to break into laughter. He glances at her, and there's a glimmer of laughter in her eyes he wants to see more of.

 

She's warm and solid at his side, and he finds that after dinner he's reluctant to break the contact. She doesn't seem to mind that he follows her up to her quarters.

"You wanna have a look at your brace now?"

That wasn't specifically his reason for going with her, but he's happy to go along with it. He doesn't really know what his reason was, except that the Citadel is full and loud and puts him on edge, and she is like a cool, solid anchor.

She sits down against the wall and has him stand up in front of her so she can examine the brace and measure the parts she must have collected at some point during the day.

Her long neck and bare head look vulnerable like this, and he flashes back to looking at them through that fucking muzzle, to putting bullets into the sand right next to her skull.

Sometimes he has nightmares where he does it. Presses the muzzle of the gun against the base of her skull, into the divot between her neck muscles. No matter how he screams at his dream self not to do it, minutes later her blood is soaking the sand and he is in a stalled war rig with nobody running up to bargain with him.

It's always hard to come out of that dream, it sticks around, the images linger. He tries to remind himself that if he had done that, he would be dead now – or hanging upside down getting drained. Maybe he'd come back here to reassure himself he hadn't killed her?

Furiosa shifts onto her knees and Max closes his eyes and tries not to twitch. She holds metal strips to his leg and marks them. He doesn't like seeing her like this, it doesn't seem right, he's never wanted to look down on her.

He's relieved when she gestures he should sit down next to her, and he can assist her by bending the metal so it conforms to his calf, while she constructs the leather straps that are going to hold it to his legs. (She puts the back of the needle in a stone with an indent and pushes the thick, hard leather down onto it, and she's getting it done quicker than he thinks he could have)

They work companionably together to build the brace, and when he is happy, she insists on making it perfect, supportive without pinching, and silent.

He gets up to walk around the room, and his eyebrows rise. It's going to take some getting used to the increased support, but it feels good. His knee aches less.

 

"Thank you."

She shrugs. "Fun to build something again. Lately it feels like all I do it talk."

"Toast and Capable are gonna do well," he says, more question than statement. They'll be backed up by a council containing Dagne and Cheedo, the remaining Vuvalini, Furiosa herself, and a few others, but he wants to know what she thinks about it.

"They really will," she agrees.

She makes a move as if to get up, and he grasps around for something to make her stay.

"Want help with your hand?"

He can tell she's considering going to bed, but then she makes a conceding sound and settles back down.

He helps her put another finger together, and by the time it's finished she's lost her usual brisk efficiency, moving slower and more languid, her shoulder and hip warm and heavy-relaxed against his.

He puts the assembled finger down on the tray and doesn't move. If she doesn't want to get up, he won't.

Some part of him – a part he can't think about too much – basks in the touch, in the trust he's being afforded. It wants to put an arm around her (but surely that will rouse her) and rest his cheek against her hair. He wants this moment to last as long as she'll let it.

After a time he loses his tension. She's not asleep, but she seems disinclined to move, and he allows himself to relax against her.

She makes an approving murmur and sighs.

 

He wakes up to a disgruntled groan and the ghost weight of her head on his shoulder. Max doesn't open his eyes, doesn't know what to say or to think about the fact that they slept sitting up, leaning against each other.

Not only that, but he actually _slept_.

He can hear her stretch out aching limbs, joints cracking, cursing under her breath about the stupidity of falling asleep sitting up.

"Don't _you_ fucking grin," she grouches at him, not at all fooled by his closed eyes.

He lets out a demonstrative snore, and gets a huff of laughter in return before she's out the door.

 

Toast gives him water and fuel and a brick of the bean paste. Marra gives him a raised-eyebrows look when he loads it into his car.

He's speeding toward the horizon before the sun is fully up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your wonderful comments! This story is barrelling down the Fury Road and shows no signs of slowing..


	5. Chapter 5

He should have said goodbye, he concedes to himself a week later. She'd been nothing but kind to him, and he no longer had the excuse of not knowing it mattered. He'd told Marra "Tell her bye from me" and thought that was enough at the time.

It no longer feels like enough.

He keeps telling himself that he'll forget about the Citadel, that over the next horizon he'll find places and people to occupy his mind. It's partly true; occupied he is.

He finds a village besieged by raiders and helps the people, he digs through wrecks to supply himself with spare parts, he gets chased out of hostile territory more than a few times. He keeps moving.

 

Forgetting the Citadel – that doesn't happen. Furiosa is with him, whether he is with her or not. He keeps seeing glimpses of her in the passenger seat from the corner of his eye. Sometimes her forehead is blackened with engine grease and she looks as she did when they drove the war rig together. Sometimes she looks clean and relaxed, dressed in loose clothing, her bare feet propped up on the dash.

She's never there when he turns to her, but it doesn't really matter.

He imagines what she'd say, sometimes. Or how she'd lean out of the window to shoot at persuers while he drove and reloaded her weapons.

 

A brick of bean paste has day-ration marks. They're made to last one person a hundred days. By the time he finishes it, Furiosa is a familiar sight in his passenger seat. She almost never says anything, but she has a distressing habit of raising her eyebrows in response to his less well considered plans.

He's kind of gotten used to her presence, truth be told. The cool, determined steel in her eyes sometimes keeps him from getting swept along by the dead. She lays next to him when he sleeps under the car.

 

"They're not real," she says one night when he's curled up tightly, half asleep while trying to keep a litany of angry voices and bloody faces at bay.

He startles enough to clunk his head against the underside of the car.

" _You're_ not real," he finally points out, when he remembers how speaking works. He's aware that Furiosa didn't go with him; his rations would go faster if she had, and she'd be more use in a firefight than merely giving him meaningful looks and eyerolls.

Furiosa is at the Citadel, or at least she was.

He likes that she's here with him, all the same.

"I'm realer than them."

He can't really argue with that. Sometimes he feels like she is the most real person he's ever met.

 

"I know, I know" he tells her the next day, speeding out of a territory with markers he really should have recognised. "That could have gone better"

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to.

 

With the bean paste gone he has no way to mark the days, but it doesn't matter.

 

He finds a dog. It's in the ruins of a settlement recently raided, the air thick with the stench of death. He walks around, trying to decide if there's anything or anyone he could help or if this is a lost cause, when he sees Furiosa go still. He follows her gaze, gun up, and – oh.

It's a young dog, and it's walking on three legs, the fourth dangling with a broken bone and an ugly wound. He spends half a day and precious rations to lure it to him, until finally the dog will allow herself to be petted. She's weak, trembling, and he puts her in the passenger seat before driving on.

"I bet Eir and Dagne could fix her up," Furiosa says, speaking for the first time in days. He doesn't look, though he wants to, because then she'll disappear. Seen from the corner of his eye she has the dog in her lap. It whines softly under her careful petting.

He grunts non-committally. He doesn't want to go back, though the reason why that was important won't come to him. He has to keep going. He has to keep going.

 

Somehow he's not surprised when the Citadel appears on the horizon. Max sighs. He didn't think he was driving in that direction, but apparently he has.

"You plan this?" he asks Furiosa. She doesn't say anything. When he turns toward the passenger seat, there's only the tightly curled up dog, getting weaker by the day.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe gratitude to the awesome people on tumblr who are posting about Mad Max - a lot of the ideas and prompts we're pitching at each other get swept up in this story as I write it. Oh the joy of brand new fandom :-)
> 
> Incidentally, you should come to [my tumblr](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/) and talk about Our Lady Saviour Furiosa with me. And if you happen to do fanart, can I pitch an idea at you?


	6. Chapter 6

He's met by a bike patrol when he's two miles out from the Citadel. Unless things have gone very wrong in the past.. months? Half year? He thinks they'll probably not be hostile, but he tucks the dog down the footwell anyway and keeps a gun at hand until the bikers have dismounted and he recognises her heavy metal hand coming from a leather jacket.

She's got three war boys and two defence squad women with her. They keep their weapons aimed at him, but all he cares about is the woman coming toward him.

"Good to see you. Been wondering if we'd see you again," she greets him, a lazy smile curling her lips.

He doesn't know what to say, just stares at her. She looks even better than the hallucination Furiosa that's been keeping him company.

He remembers both the road-worn exhausted determination and the relaxed but weary woman in the Citadel. This Furiosa is the best of both; that coiled power he remembers, the steel in her spine, but she carries it easily now, no longer drained. Like she's in her element.

The dog whimpers from her spot in the footwell, too weak to get back up on the seat. Furiosa leans into the passenger side window and spots the dog.

"Who's this?"

It's directed at him, but there's a softness in her voice he's only ever heard directed at little Angharad. The dog gives a tiny tail wag.

"Bolt," he decides, even though he's been thinking of the dog as Fury. Furiosa's Fury. He doesn't want to tell her that though, and naming the dog after a pair of boltcutters amuses him.

"She's hurt. You said—" he cuts himself off because admitting that a hallucination of her has been keeping him company is probably not what he wants to do here. "I thought Dagne and Eir might be able to..."

Furiosa lets out a long sigh, and then nods.

"Yeah, we can see. Come on."

She doesn't ride in his passenger seat now, she's on her bike out in front of him. The rest of her group continues their patrol.

He follows her through the big gates, parks his car where she directs him.

"I'll send word for Dagne. You know your way around, ask somebody if you need something, use the work room to sleep," Furiosa tells him curtly.

This news delivered she turns back toward her bike, apparently ready to go out again. He takes an involuntarily step in her direction, not understanding what cooled her welcome, and not wanting her to leave just yet.

"Hey," he manages.

She turns back to him with a questioning expression, and he takes the opening, walks closer.

He reaches up slowly, telegraphing the motion, and cups the back of her head, steps in to press their foreheads together. They're the same height, it's easy, like they've done it before.

She stands utterly still for the space of a long breath, neck muscles cording under his touch like she's trying to decide if she wants to yank out of his grip or headbutt him. Then she breathes, and relaxes into his touch, and her hand comes up to cup his head.

"It's good to see you," he manages finally.

"Yes."


	7. Chapter 7

Dagne comes down the newly finished steps of the Citadel and directs him to carry the dog. She takes him to what is apparently the healing rooms, where she and Eir examine the dog.

"That leg is poisoning her," Eir says finally. "Gonna have to make her a tripod dog."

Max involuntarily pictures what that's going to involve and only then notices where he is. The space has been stripped, cleaned and painted, but this used to be the Organic Mechanic's space. This is where they branded and tattoed him like a thing. He spent weeks hanging in a cage right outside this door.

His entire body freezes, and he is suddenly sweating.

He doesn't notice the look that the two women exchange, but then suddenly Dagne is standing in front of him, speaking gently.

"Max? Max, come on, why don't we go see how the gardens look?" She sounds very far away. When he doesn't respond to her closeness she puts a careful hand on his arm and guides him toward the door, speaking all the while.

"Eir is going to take real good care of your dog, I promise. You don't need to be here... Let's go see how your plants look, yeah?"

The walk to the top gardens barely registers, but when they get out into the open air he drags in a deep breath, finally shaken from the memory of the stench that had hung in the Organic Mechanic space. Dagne walks him to the well up here, where woven mats have been suspended to provide shade.

"Do you just want to spend some time here?"

He nods numbly and lets himself drop to the grass. Dagne takes one of the heavy cups next to the well and fills it for him, and then leaves, exchanging a few words with Cheedo on her way to the steps.

His shirt is soaked with sweat, and he's exhausted, numb with it.

 

The sun stands at least an hour later when he scrapes up the energy to struggle out of his clammy shirt and spread it out in the sun. Puts his jacket back on – he doesn't like anybody to see his back. Then he sinks back down to the grass, content to merely exist.

When he gradually becomes aware of the world around him again he sees that Cheedo is working on the other side of the garden with a small crew. They seem to be leaving him space on purpose. He appreciates it.

Looking around idly he notices the symbol over the well. The little pedestal in the middle of the basin was empty when he was here before – it looks like it once contained the wheel and skull that were Immortan Joe's symbol.

What it displays now is a boltcutter.

He can't help the chuckle. Now he thinks of it, he's seen it in more places since he arrived – both actual boltcutters and the symbols of them. Have they replaced the wheel and skull with this?

"We found it when we could go back for salvage," Furiosa says, approaching on the path across the well. She's wearing the new hand, the one he helped her construct

"So you made it your symbol?"

"The Citadel's symbol," she corrects, coming over to where he is. She dips a cup of water for herself and drops down in the grass an armslength from where he is sitting.

"The people seemed to need some kind of symbol, and we needed something we could stand to look at every day. Capable came up with this. We're still thinking about if there's anything we can do about that ugly-ass skull in the rock wall. Maybe with chalk," she muses.

"Tell me there's a gesture," he implores her.

She solemnly raises her arms to bring her fisted hands out in front of her, at about the height of her forehead. Then she snaps them toward eachother, like operating a pair of boltcutters.

It's honestly the best thing he's ever seen, and the laugh bursts out of him, gravelly and strange to his own ears. He's gasping for breath, and he doesn't stop, can't stop laughing for what feels like a long time.

Furiosa is grinning along, teeth bared in open joy.

 

When his laughter tapers off he is quiet for a long time, his arms wrapped around his drawn up knees. There's nothing on his mind, no dead faces clamouring for his attention, no sadness or joy or grief. He feels empty and exhausted, and maybe a little lighter, too.

 

Furiosa hasn't left, though she's asked somebody to bring up some work. When he finally starts paying attention to his surroundings again, he finds her working through lists of spare parts, and composing a list of features the new War Rig they're building must have.

He shifts closer so he can read over her shoulder, then gets distracted by the dark swirls of a tattoo that lick up her neck. They're hundreds of fine lines, curling and swirling in a pattern he recognises from what some of the Vuvalini had tattoed on their arms. The pattern emerges from her shirt-covered upper back to cover Immortan Joe's brand, not hiding it completely – nothing could hide those thick, ugly welts of flesh – but breaking it and making it irrelevant.

It's beautiful. He has to fight the impulse to reach up and trace the lines with a careful fingertip.

After a few minutes of looking over her shoulder she gives an amused huff and hands him the work plan to look at while she slowly, carefully writes her list. She doesn't move away from him.

 

When the sun begins to set, Eir comes up into the garden, followed by a helper who is carrying the dog.

"It went well," Eir says to him, her wrinkled eyes kind. The helper lays the dog in the grass next to Max. There are bandages, and he can tell most of the injured leg has been removed.

"Still groggy from the gas, but I think she'll be fine. Gonna need some care through the night though, and I figured you were the one for the job."

He nods – of course he'll care for the dog, he was the one who brought her here. He pets Bolt's soft ears and she whimpers in her sleep.

 

Furiosa arranges for food to be brought to the work room so he doesn't have to leave Bolt alone, and she eats with him, mostly silent.

He notices that she seems to be avoiding the dog, never looking at it if she can avoid it. He's surprised, dismayed maybe – it hadn't occurred to him that she might not like the dog like he does.

Then he sees the way the muscles around her eyes tighten when Bolt whimpers, the subtle way she draws her left arm closer against her body, and he remembers the way her voice had sounded when she'd first seen the dog in his car. Oh. It isn't the dog she dislikes. It's the memories of losing a limb.

"Go wash," she tells him when they're done eating. "There are some clean clothes in that chest over there. I'll stay."

He hesitates, because she doesn't look comfortable being around Bolt, who is beginning to stir, but he knows better than to say that.

 

Getting clean is as good as he remembers. He cuts his hair and beard as short as he can manage with a borrowed pair of scissors, and leaves a layer of mud in the drainage tray.

 

Furiosa stays with him and Bolt for a while, and then he discovers she has ceded the suite completely; the room that she slept in is now an office used by Toast and Capable.

"Come get me if there's a problem. My door is three rooms down, the one with the chalk handprints."

He nods, and bars the door after her. The work room seems overly large and overly quiet now, even though neither of them had said much before she left. He pulls the fitfully sleeping dog into his lap and tries to relax enough to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

He doesn't sleep. At all. After he's spent several hours trying to see the ceiling rather than the bloody faces that threaten and cajole, he can admit to himself that he'd hoped Furiosa would want to sleep near him again. That he missed her near to him and hoped that maybe she'd missed it too.

After another hour of jittery, scraped-raw nerves he growls and gets to his feet. Picks up the dog, cradling her carefully, and leaves the work room.

The door with white chalk handprints stares back at him. Bolt shifts in his arms.

Max knocks very lightly, half hoping she won't open – surely she is asleep – and he can go back to the work room like he should.

The door swings open, and Furiosa appears, wearing the same thin, loose top and trousers he remembers. She flicks her eyes from his face to the dog and then back to him, raising her eyebrows at him. She doesn't look like she just woke up – he's not sure if that's a good thing or not.

She seems to be waiting for him to explain himself, and he licks his lips. There are times when she seems mercifully quick to understand him without words, but apparently now is not one of those times.

"It's – bad. Tonight. Can I – can we.. be here?" he manages.

She gives him a long, even look, and then lifts her chin slightly, letting the door open further. Max feels his heartbeat slow even at that lukewarm reception.

Her quarters aren't large – a bed, a desk and chair, a storage chest, hooks on the wall where her prostheses hang. He tries to decide on the most suitable bit of floorspace when she speaks.

"You gonna disappear by morning?"

There's something in her voice he can't quite place, but the answer is clear.

"No."

She nods, seemingly accepting this, and lifts the covers, gesturing that he should get into the bed.

He gives her a startled look, and she raises her eyebrows at him expectantly.

Oh.

The bed isn't wide for two people and a dog, and it's a little awkward at first, but he finally gets settled on his back with the dog in his arms. Furiosa gets in and puts her back to his, shoulders and hips a warm pressure against him. She feels tense, like she'd rather not touch but the bed is too narrow for space. It still feels nice, another person there, and he sighs in relaxation.

His mind is still ticking over what she'd asked him and especially _how_ she'd asked him. They've both being quiet for some time when he realises that she was _hurt_. Maybe by his leaving but certainly by his disappearing without goodbye. He doesn't know why he'd completely missed that. Perhaps because he thought she'd stayed close for him, and it hadn't occurred to him that she might simply _want_ to.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs.

"It isn't exactly easy for me to let somebody get close, either," she says under her breath, somehow getting what he means.

There's a rusty emotion stirring in his chest and he finally identifies it as shame. Truth be told he hadn't considered how any of this might feel for her. He'd thought her so much more comfortable with this human contact thing – after all, hasn't she lived among people all this time? – that he's been.. well, focused only on himself.

He's been assuming it cost her nothing to give.

"Sorry," he mumbles again, face pressed against his upper arm, his head reeling. He feels raw and open inside, exposed to things he isn't used to feeling, like years and layers of caked dust have finally been knocked off of him.

She is not impervious to pain any more than he is.

He'd forgotten that he could deal out pain, not just absorb it.

She makes a sleepy sound low in her throat that he isn't sure how to take, but her shoulders relax against his back, and he can breathe again.

"Marra said," she murmurs after what feels like a long time quiet breathing. "That maybe you'd been a thing for so long that you.. didn't know. That you could affect others."

He has no words for this situation, but he reaches his hand to where hers is curled around her side. Touches it for the space of a long moment, silent, apologetic.

She sighs in a way that seems to portend sleep, and they speak no more.


	9. Chapter 9

Max sleeps. Mostly. He wakes a few times, but easily, just a sharp breath and eyes snapping open, and falls back asleep every time.

When he wakes to daylight – all at once, but not violently so – he finds that he's shifted toward her. The dog is draped over his chest, a warm, solid weight. His face is turned sideways, tucked against the fine, curly lines on the back of Furiosa's neck.

She smells good, and it stirs some long-forgotten feeling in him, something that he can't name, something that confuses him.

She's still on her side, apparently having trained herself not to move, not to draw attention to herself even in sleep.

He can't move – not without disturbing them – and he doesn't really want to.

When she moves her foot away he is suddenly aware of how she had the sole of her foot pressed against his calf, the way her short hair tickles his forehead.

She makes a low, drowsey sound.

"You want out?"

He knows she doesn't want him to leave, but she offers it anyway, and he feel a swell of unfamiliar fondness and admiration for her.

"No."

She makes a low, pleased sound, and her foot returns, finding its place on his calf again.

 

The next night, there is no asking. No attempt to sleep in the work room. He comes to her room, and she lets him in without a word, and they sleep together in her bed, always her back to him as if it's a last shield she can't quite drop. They sleep as well as either of them ever sleeps. (which isn't terribly well, but it helps somehow, to have another person there, to hear breathing.)

 

Max tells himself he'll stay until Bolt is well enough. The dog is slowly improving, getting around better, getting more energy. She's the sweetest thing, and she's fast becoming a favourite with Cheedo, Toast and Capable, the people she's occasionally left with it when he thinks he will be too active for Bolt to keep up just yet.

Mostly she follows him or Furiosa, always happiest when the two if them are together.

Furiosa has relaxed around the dog. Now Bolt is no longer in such pain, it seems to be easier to enjoy the dog's attentions.

It's good. Sleeping next to her, their shoulders or their legs pressed together. She sleeps with her back to him, tightly curled up, but in the night they gentle to eachother, the contact a little more solid, the wakening no longer awkward.

He's not unaware of the sly looks and the innocent comments by Dagne and Toast, but both Furiosa and he ignore it.

 

He gets restless, like he knew he would. There are rumours of a new clan moving in toward the Bullet Farm, maybe on its way to Citadel. The patrols catch a scout who dies with wild eyed fervour, and it has Furiosa on edge. Citadel is firmly under control now and provisional peace made with Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, but that doesn't mean it'll stay this way.

He's been making himself useful where he can. The work to erase the skull from the rock wall is well underway and knocking out the teeth to a roar of approval from below is possibly the most satisfying thing he's ever done.

But Max knows he can be far more use out there. Everybody knows Furiosa, and though she no longer effectively leads the Citadel, every interaction she has with an outsider is unavoidably as The Furiosa of Citadel, Breaker Of Chains.

("if I'm gonna be stuck with a title, that one's pretty tolerable")

Nobody knows Max. He can slip in and out, speak to people, gather information without immediate rumours that The Furiosa has designs on neighbouring territories.

 

After a week he says goodbye. Properly this time.

Bolt seems to be getting around well enough on three legs, and she zooms ahead of him into Marra's workshop. Furiosa is perched sideways on her bike, knees drawn up, as she waits for her patrol squad to gear up. She's talking to the older Vuvalini woman, and he takes a moment to look at her like this, relaxed, confident. To appreciate who she was when he first saw her, and who she has gotten the chance to be now.

Bolt presents herself for petting with wiggly enthusiasm, and Furiosa looks up smiling, knowing he must not be far behind

She spots him and invites him closer with a tilt of her head. They're talking about seeing if there's anything left to salvage of a sand-buried convoy a day's drive away.

"If nothing else, we have the manpower to get the metal here and give the smelters something to work with," Marra agrees.

The metal smelting workshop is new, Max knows. Under Joe things were just broken and cobbled together in ever new, ever destructive configurations. With the old knowledge of the Vuvalini and some people from among the former wretched with relevant skills, the new Citadel is to be a place of makers, not breakers.

"'m gonna.. go," he gets out, awkward now it comes to it.

She's not surprised, just nods in acceptance. He's pretty sure she never expected him to stay.

"Very well. Take what you need in supplies, and-" she takes a breath, "stay safe."

It's not the order she'd perhaps intended, the pause and the slightly too fast delivery giving it the tone of a wish, a question almost. It dawns on him, sluggish but bright like the morning sun, that she is _worried_ for him.

(She doesn't tell him to come back, but Toast had already done that – by way of giving him a 50-day brick of bean paste and telling him to pick up a new one when he's through that. Since he'll be sharing with Bolt, it's more like 30 days)

He doesn't know why it hasn't occurred to him before now that she might think about him when he's away, and worry about his safety. Perhaps because she is the master of the facade, the calm, closed expression and the straight back. Furiosa is bedrock, steady and unchanged, and he doesn't know what to do with the thought that his absence affects her in some way.

He steps closer to her, and she looks up at him from her perch on the bike. (he thinks that's something, though he's not sure what. He remembers well how fast she'd get to her feet when approached, before)

She gives a tiny nod when he reaches out, and lets him cup his hand around the back of her head and bring their foreheads together for long seconds. Her eyes drift shut, and their breaths mingle.

He doesn't know what to say, but it seems like maybe it isn't needed.

When the touch ends, as he straightens up, he brushes his lips over her forehead.

She blinks up at him in surprise, like she has no idea what he just did, but well – that makes two of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With deep gratitude to Spatz and Inmyriadbits


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to Spatz and Inmyriadbits, for helping me make this chapter a lot better than it was

The open road is as satisfying as always, and Bolt makes for excellent company. Rather than allow him to retreat into himself, the cheerful young dog has him speaking, even grinning sometimes. She's found an old bleached animal bone and regularly implores him to throw it for her, and seems to go almost as fast on three legs as she would have on four.

(He'd seen Furiosa size her up, contemplating if a prosthetic was workable, but she'd ultimately decided that the dog was doing well enough without it)

He makes a big sweep out toward the Bullet Farm and beyond, making the rounds among the surrounding territories. Stumbles upon a few people who are out to kill him, gets chased out of a few tiny settlements that are nervous about strangers, but mostly he listens closely for news.

At night Bolt liked to sleep against his side, and more often than not she wakes him with a soft whine before his dreams fully grab hold of him.

Furiosa is there too, though much less frequent than the last time he was on his own. She's in the passenger seat sometimes, looking supremely at ease with her bare feet propped up on the dashboard. She's almost always petting Bolt, but she rarely says anything anymore.

Until the time she turns up in his dream. She'd been stretched out at his side, her back to him like she slept back at Citadel, and then suddenly she'd turned around to face him, body pressing into his side. She draws up one of her legs over his, resting it over his thighs, and when he looks at her, baffled, she says "Hey Max" in a tone that has him saying "Huh" to the underside of his car, suddenly awake.

_What?_

He spends most of the day feeling vaguely unsettled, like the angles of road and sky and horizon are all subtly wrong.

 

It's not until the next night, when he dreams more or less the same and wakes up hard in his pants, that understanding dawns. Oh. _That_.

Max hasn't had anything approximating desire in years – loss had killed it stone dead and survival pushed even the thought of it out of mind. Just one more thing he'd lost. His body had continued to do what males bodies do, but he hasn't been turned on in longer than he can remember.

Now, apparently, he's coming to the point where a vaguely sensual dream is having him wake up like... this. He frowns and waits for it to go away.

 

Now the thought is there, now he understands what's happening, it won't leave him alone. Furiosa, whom he slept next to for more than a week, chaste as could be, suddenly fills his senses at odd moments. The scent of her neck as he woke up with his face pressed against it. The way her eyes had shone with laughter when she'd told him about the boltcutters. The line of her shoulders when she set up a sniper shot. The swing of her leg when she got onto her bike. The warm press of her head on his shoulder that first time they'd fallen asleep together.

(Even the low timbre of her voice when she'd said "Don't breathe". He wakes up on that memory, looks down at his crotch, and says " _Really?_ ")

Thankfully there's nothing explicit, or he might never be able to face her again. It's strange enough as it is, these new associations his mind is suddenly producing. It's a hell of a thing to get used to.

It's vague and unspecific, but he _wants_.

 

Bolt is catching and eating lizards, so she doesn't have much impact on his rations. He keeps track of the days by the packet. Half of him wants to circle back now, to go back to Citadel and sleep next to her. To see her eyes light up when she realises he's back and he's safe.

The other half knows things have irrevocably changed – what if he has this kind of dream while next to her? - and he needs more time to figure it out.

His dreams, when he manages to avoid the nightmares, are still soft and sweet. Her pleased hum as he kisses her neck. Her lips smiling against his. Her eyes drifting shut as he rubs the sore muscles of her shoulder. Furiosa dragging him close to her by the collar of his jacket and kissing him.

He wants that. He wants to make her feel good. Make her smile, make her laugh. (Make her gasp.)

It is beginning to dawn on him that he might have that power. If she'll let him, he thinks he could make her feel so very good.

It seems like such an obvious thing to him now, he wonders if perhaps she's been waiting for him to figure it out.

 

The settlements he comes upon further out are tense and wary, and he struggles to get people to talk to him.

There is some evidence of inter-clan rumbling further out, and from what he can tell there might be a clan that's going to push for the farm, but all signs indicate that that is their final goal. They want to set themselves up for trade with Citadel.

Furiosa – or rather, the council – will need to hear about this. Max has no idea if the ties between the new leader of the Bullet Farm and Citadel are close enough that they'd consider supporting the status quo. For all he knows they'll shore up their defences and watch it happen, content to consider trade with the new leaders.

When he's gathered as much concrete intel as he thinks he's going to get, he turns back, letting the road pull him toward Citadel. He still has eleven days of food left, and it won't take more than four to get back there.

"Aren't _you_ in a hurry," Furiosa comments from the passenger seat with a self-satisfied smirk.

"Shut up," he grumbles at her, but he's smiling.


	11. Chapter 11

She's not there when he arrives. He might have expected that, arriving in the afternoon, but he'd built this up in his mind; spotting her, both walking toward each other, the forehead touch. Things falling into place.

"She's still out, boyo," Marra grins, seeing him look around for Furiosa. "Been digging up a road train. You've got good timing, they're bringing it in today."

Max grunts at her, not liking how transparent he apparently is.

"Should be a couple hours, we've got them on the horizon. Any news she needs immediately?"

"It can wait," he tells her, remembering about human interaction all over again. "Until morning council."

"You're both lookin' a bit thin in the face," Marra says, petting an ecstatic Bolt. "Why don't you go wash up and eat something? Our girl won't be out much longer."

He reluctantly takes the advice – if he has to wait anyway, there is something to be said for being clean. He's never cared before, but for some reason it suddenly matters that he doesn't smell bad.

 

He gets a red spherical fruit with his meal. It's small enough that he could eat it in one bite, but he saves it for last and bites into it cautiously. His teeth break through the skin into juicy, sweet-tart flesh, and inside of that is a watery mass of seeds he's been told to save in a cup.

"It's a tomato," says an old woman with wisdom tattoed all over her skin. "If we save all the seeds we should be able to have plenty soon enough."

It's the best thing he's ever tasted.

 

He isn't sure what to do with himself after his meal, so he takes Bolt up to the gardens, letting her run and play and bug the people working in the garden because she wants her bone thrown.

There are row upon row of knee-high plants, and a group of people is systematically digging them up, root and all, and carefully placing them in sacks.

"We're transplanting them to the field down below," Thea, one of the former milking mothers, explains when she sees him examining a plant. "'tis said that hemp cleans the soil."

"And if we can grow enough, rope, fabric, paper, even building materials," one of her crew adds. "Let's hope they take."

 

Max settles down in the grass under the canopy next to the boltcutter well basin, trying to quell his restlessness. He's eager to see Furiosa, maybe a little worried too. His dreams have been... he's not sure if sleeping next to her is still a good idea. He needs to find out if they are on the same page, or at least reading the same book.

The gardens are quiet by now, the workers have taken their last load to plant on the field below, the other people have gone down for their evening meal. When Bolt has tired herself out and claims his lap for a bed, he decides he doesn't really need to move anyway.

He's comfortably hazy and languid for a while, until Bolt suddenly jumps up and he realises the low drone of engines is now so close that it's echoing between the spires of Citadel.

Six cars are together just about managing to tow a massive truck with two tank-trailers behind it, and behind it follows another car loaded up with tires. The convoy is moving at little more than walking pace, guarded and shepherded by bikes.

The yard streams full of waiting helpers as the convoy arrives, and Max searches for Furiosa. She'll be on a bike, leading and defending the vulnerable vehicles and their drivers.

A moment later he sees her dismount, pulling down the scarf she'd worn to protect her face from the dust. Her and Marra's voices ring out, not understandable up where Max is, but he watches work crews gather and snap to tasks, and the chaos rapidly turns to industrious order.

He considers going down there, but Furiosa is still so busy that he postpones their reunion, selfishly wanting to claim that moment for himself rather than share it with fifty others. He wants to hoard it, tuck it away under his breastbone. So he just sits there and observes.

 

"I was wondering if I'd find you two here," Furiosa says from a few metres away, and Max turns to smile up at her. She looks dusty and tired, her heavy prosthetic still on – it looks like she has come up here as soon as her duties allowed.

Bolt has already leapt up to greet Furiosa, whining and squirming against her legs, then letting herself fall to the grass for belly rubs. Furiosa grins and obliges.

Max gets up too, but he doesn't have to wait for his turn to be greeted. When he's on his feet, she straightens up and reaches for him. He closes the distance so she can cup a hand around his head in the now familiar greeting. Their foreheads meet and she sighs, almost sinking into the touch.

The sensation of it settles warm and slow into him, a solid thing, a real thing. He has not imagined that the gesture pleased her. He has not fabricated it, made it up in his mind like so many ghosts and shadows.

"I'm glad you're well," she says, and he hums in agreement, simply happy to be in in this moment.

 

Furiosa brought her food up – just bean paste and a tomato – and they sit together while she eats. She tells him about their find. What had seemed a single wreck at first had turned out to be an entire road train: a truck and three trailers. It had taken almost two weeks to dig out what they wanted, a precarious operation of camping out in the open with thirty workers. It's turned out as a great success, and she's almost glowing with it.

He tells her about what he found on his scouting expedition, the state of the settlements he's seen.

After they've established that the news will hold until the morning, they don't say much more, letting the cooling evening air hold the comfortable silence between them.

"They got the skull off," he comments finally, nodding to the other rock spire they can see from where they're sitting. The work he'd started had been continued in his absence, the ugly wheel and skull in the rock wall only visible now if you knew where to look. The beginning of the boltcutters sigil was getting painted onto the rock face with chalk.

Furiosa smiles, teeth gleaming in the starlit darkness.

"There ain't a day that doesn't bring a smile to my face."

He can't help smiling in response.

"Satisfying." He realises that's a little crypic, and adds, "Knocking out the teeth."

She tips her face up to the starry sky and grins, and he is glad Bolt comes in that moment with a carrot in her mouth, distracting them both, or he might have– he might have– he wants to--

How would she react if he kissed her? Cupped his hand gently around the back of her skull, already familiar and so, so intimate, and pressed his lips to hers? Would he taste a little gasp of surprise or is she expecting it, waiting for him to do it?

He tries not to think about it any more when they walk down to her room. Her motions are heavy, weary, and he has no idea if her thoughts ever run to kissing (to kissing _him_ ) but he can be sure they do not do so now.

 

He watches while she takes off her heavy arm with a soft groan. She's been camping out there at the salvage site for a week, patrolling almost non-stop, making sure the crew at were safe. That means the heavy duty prosthetic, and that means a sore shoulder and bruises under her skin.

She disappears to the bathing room down the hallway. Max moves around the room, not sure what to do with himself. The last time he was at the Citadel this had all been so simple, and part of him resents how fraught everything is now.

Finally he takes off his boots and his outer clothes and gets into the bed, sitting up against the headboard, feeling oddly unsettled and on edge.

Furiosa returns cleaner and with her sleep clothes on. She sits down on the edge of the bed and groans softly, and his hands twitch, eager to touch and soothe, to make her feel better.

He gives in to the impulse, reaching out for her. He moves slowly, giving her the chance to turn away from his touch. She doesn't, and he gently settles his hands on her shoulders, stroking warmly.

She gives a little hum and lets her head hang forward, and he feels a flash of guilt for enjoying that little surrender into his hands.

"Come," he says softly, moving to sit with his back against the wall. He gestures to the space in front of him, and she comes after only a brief moment of hesitation, sitting with her back to him.

He just strokes her shoulders for a long moment, trying to feel where the worst tension sits. The heavy prosthetic arm pulls at her shoulders and upper back, and he gently presses a harder spot.

She groans, and he immediately lightens his touch.

"Sorry, sorry."

She huffs a breath.

"I don't break."

"Not the point."

 _I know you can take the pain, but I don't want to hurt you, I want to make you feel good,_ he can't say.

She pushes into his touch, and he gets the idea, adapts to that intensity as he kneads her muscles. He's trying hard to focus on the goal here, on easing her pain. He forces his thoughts away from the way her flesh feels under his hands, how the scent of her skin assaults his senses, the sight of her long, elegant neck bent in surrender to his touch, or how her beautiful tattoo disappears under her shirt and he can't help wondering what the whole thing looks like.

He especially tries to ignore the tiny sounds she makes in her throat whenever he works loose a particularly tight spot, but he worries they might turn up in his dreams anyway.

Bolt has settled into Furiosa's lap, enjoying the attention her idle hand lavishes on the young dog.

Max works on her shoulders and upper back for a long time, and when they seem as loose as he thinks they will get he moves to her left arm, starting around the cap of her shoulder.

He folds his right arm around her torso so he can massage from both sides. She freezes a moment at the feeling of being confined by his arms, but he waits her out, trusting she'll tell him if it's too much. After a few seconds she begins to breathe again, and he cups the shoulder joint between both hands, warming it and massaging it.

Her body sags warm and heavy against his chest as she relaxes, and Max doesn't know what to _do_ with this feeling, this tremulous waver between _flight_ and _stay_ , making him too aware of his own heartbeat. He hopes she can't tell the trembling in his fingers.

Her breathing is slow and deep, but when he lets his hands still she gives a disgruntled little sound.

"Demanding," he says under his breath, low and close to her ear.

"Mm-hm," she agrees.

Max grins.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Speaking to people is exhausting, and the next day starts out with speaking at the council meeting.

He tells the thirteen people present what he found out, and then they ask questions until he feels wild eyed and twitchy, like he's being scraped open. When Furiosa suggests to the council that they don't need him for the follow-up discussion on what they want to do with the Bullet Farm situation, he wants to kiss her. He brushes past her as he leaves, instead, close enough that the little hairs on their skin just brush, making him shiver.

 

Figuring some quiet maintenance on his car might level him out, he goes down to the workshop. Only to find that it is full to bursting with people working on the new rig. Everything echoes with the sound of chipping hammers working away at the rust.

Marra is at council, but the work is overseen by the oldest War Boy that Max has ever seen. (he keeps forgetting that he is supposed to call them Free Boys now. It hasn't completely caught on with them either)

The others call him Ace, and there are fresh scars on his neck that remind Max of hearing Dagne talk about how they're trying to remove tumors on the Free Boys. Ace has a heavy limp, a slanted mouth and a calm authority.

Max remembers that Furiosa has mentioned her Sarge. Apparently he was her second in command before everything changed. She betrayed him for her escape, but he survived, and they've apparently hashed it out since, because he's working for her again.

Max has absolutely no idea what the guy knows about him, but Ace directs a couple of young boys—pups, he corrects himself, one of them is growing out her hair - to watch what 'Furiosa's man' is doing with his engine.

Max gives Ace a glare, and gets a toothy grin in return.

The pups keep asking questions, and it's hard not to indulge their hopeful eyes, but there is all together too much talking for him. Too much noise. He keeps getting lost inside of his own head, coming back to himself to find Bolt nosing at his hand. The kids are respectful, probably not unfamiliar with people who go quiet in the middle of sentences, but Max hates it.

 

When he's put his car back together he shakes off the pups and goes for a drive. He parks up half a mile from the Citadel, in easy view of the guards. He throws a toy for Bolt for a while and watches her hunt lizards, but mostly he enjoys the quiet.

 

Instead of in the meal hall, dinner is the work room with the Sisters, the Vuvalini and a few others. He learns that the tatooed History Woman is called Miss Giddy and was part of the escape plan. She seems to get on very well with Eir.

Capable explains over dinner that 'Furiosa's man' is likely just a way to say something about his role in the Citadel. Cheedo has people who work in the gardens with her. Marra's guys are the blackthumbs. Eir and Dagne's people are the ones who are helping in the infirmary, the medicinal garden and tending to the Citadelians – formerly the Wretched. Toast and Capable herself have a team of people to help with supplies, trade, production and diplomacy.

"Furiosa's people are defence and transport. Ace himself is one of her men too."

"Hm."

He believes her, but he also doesn't think that's all of it. These people only know him through Furiosa, and it's not unlikely it's known he sleeps in her room. What would Furiosa think if she hears they've decided he's hers?

(What does he want her to think?)

 

He is exhausted from all the voices, ready to pack it in for the day not long after dinner.

Everybody has stayed in the work room, seated on the big cushions. Cheedo and Capable are talking about the plans for the first hemp harvest.

Furiosa is deep in conversation with Toast, Eir and Dagne about the health situation of the Free Boys and pups. Apparently it is improving now they no longer wear their toxic white paint, and Eir and Dagne are removing tumors when possible. Most of the Free Boys will probably still have half lives, but hopefully longer and more comfortable. The pups though, Eir sounds hopeful about.

Max listens for a while, but then he remembers that he doesn't have to wait for her to retire for the day – she offered him the use of her room whether she was there or not. Bolt, who is in Cheedo's lap, opts to stay where the attention is.

The silence of Furiosa's room is like Eir's aloe balm applied directly to his brain.

 

He's in that hazy dream-soft stage when she comes into the room, and he doesn't really wake up. The sounds of her footfalls, her moving around and taking off her arm are familiar enough not to alarm him.

"Hmm?"

"Shh, don't wake up," she says, low and soothing, "all is well."

It's so familiar, her voice sounds like this when he's on the road. He turns his face toward her low voice, reaches out to where he feels her settle into the bed. She smells good, and he murmurs and tugs her closer to him, slinging an arm over her.

"Max?"

He hums and kisses the short fuzz of her head, rubbing his cheek against it the way he does when he's on the road and she comes to him at night.

"Mm, sleep," he orders. She huffs a breath, but her body relaxes into his embrace.

 

When he wakes before dawn he's quite certain it was a dream until he realises he still has an arm across her body, palm splayed warmly over her ribs while she breathes peacefully.

He's crossed a line and he has no idea how to deal with it, so he quietly gets out of bed and goes to the newly brought in salvage wrecks to begin work.

 

He starts out alone, but more people gradually come to work on the cars. He's waist deep into engine one of what will become the new war rig when he hears Furiosa's voice, speaking to Marra.

"He gone again?"

She sounds... _resigned_ , he realises. Like she's been waiting for it, and that makes him feel like he just got punched in the gut.

He decides that she deserves better than to be the rock he ebbs and floods around. He's not sure where the metaphor comes from, but it seems to work. She is not static and unchanged while he figures out how to be a whole person, and he will not run again. Leave, probably. Run, no.

"No, over there," Marra says, and Max can picture perfectly the way Furiosa's eyebrows might be rising right now. He stills as he feels her approach, somehow hyper aware of her, the back of his neck prickling.

She climbs up onto the side steps of the cab and peers at the de-sanding he's gotten done so far.

"Morning. Not a bad find, is it?"

He looks up, surprised by her easy tone, and she nods at the engine, which is indeed in a remarkably good state for having been dug out of a sand drift.

If she has any kind of opinion about his sleepy liberties she doesn't show it, and whatever awkwardness he had imagined quickly passes as they get into the engine, companionably working together.

Bolt has been making friends with the work crew by offering them random tools and playing keep-away with them. It's not great for productivity but amuses the younger kids to no end, and Marra watches indulgently. Max idly wonders if this is the first time the Citadel has ever echoed with laughter.

When the young dog tires of her game she manages to get up into the cab and sits in the drivers seat, looking very pleased with herself.

They both laugh when they see her, and Max gets a little bit lost in the moment, senses hyper aware of the feeling of Furiosa at his side, the accidental brushes of their arms and shoulders, the way her laugh sounds, how her arms are grimy with motor oil and rust, how she slides a wrench under the collar of her top to scratch between her shoulderblades, how sweat sheens in the divot between where her neck muscles meet her skull.

He wants to press his face into her neck and lick her sweat away, and _that_ is such a wildly unexpected and inappropriate thought that he freezes for the space of a few seconds.

"Max?"

She sounds carefully level, a touch of concern to her voice that snaps him back into motion. She probably thinks he's having a flashback. He shakes his head to get rid of the thought and jumps down from the hood of the cab to go get a cup of water.

He drinks and then refills the cup to bring to her, in silent apology for his weird behaviour. She thanks him and drinks, then pours the last dregs into her eyes to rinse the sweat from them.

 

He realises only later that she is avoiding other duties to be spending time working on the new war rig. Duty guards come over a couple of times to report handovers to her, but he also distinctly hears Marra claim to a council member that Furiosa is probably in the North gardens.

They are both bent into the big engine during that exchange, elbow deep in grease and rust, and Furiosa's eyes are gleaming, the corners of her mouth ticked up, and the look she shoots is full of misschief shared.

He's pretty sure he's going to be dreaming about that look.

Along the course of the morning some of the heavy weariness she's carried since the salvage run is finally beginning to ease off her shoulders.

 

"The council wants to offer those invaders trade, so they won't need to take the Bullet Farm," Furiosa says at one point, taking a break on the roof of the cab and watching him work. He doesn't normally like being looked at, but he could always take more from her than from anybody else. It's not uncomfortable.

"Do you know – they got anything to trade?"

"Yeah, that's the issue," she sighs. "Chances are they won't have much. And if we pick something like cars or metal, they might just start stealing them from other people."

"Hm. What are you gonna do?"

"Fucked if I know. We don't want to end up encouraging other groups to throw their weight around so we'll notice them."

He grunts in agreement.

She holds out the spanner and he takes it automatically, only realising when he looks back down at the engine that yes, he needed a spanner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to Redcirce for stuntreading :-)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to Redcirce for stuntreading

It's in the dark, early hours of the morning when she gives a sharp intake of breath, body full of panicky tension. Max is sitting upright and reaching for a knife before he even has his eyes open. It takes long seconds before he knows where he is and what is happening.

Which appears to be that Furiosa is having a nightmare. She's breathing with sharp, high-pitched inhales, and she's scratching and beating at her nub with a frantic ferocity that scares him.

"Furiosa. _Furiosa!_ "

He's well aware it's not a great move to touch her right now, but she is scoring deep nail marks into the skin of her nub, and he can't stand to watch her hurt herself.

"Furiosa, wake up," he says again, firmly, and when that has no apparent effect, he puts a hand on each of her elbows and pins them against the mattress, leaning his weight but staying out of range of a possible head butt.

She comes awake with a sharp gasp, her eyes wide and confused, and then she twists hard, trying to throw him off.

"Furiosa, Furiosa," he says soothingly, before she can gather her wits for a more serious attempt. "You're all right. You were dreaming."

"It _hurts_ ," she hisses, and he startles, lets go of her arms. She immediately clamps her hand around the nub and he can see how hard she's squeezing.

"Your nub hurts?" he asks, confused.

"My _hand_ ," she grits out, beating her fist against it. "Cramp."

It takes him a moment to catch up. The hand she doesn't have is cramping? But _oh_ , he has heard about this, about phantom pain. Nerves firing off, giving a brain information that doesn't make sense any more.

"All right, come here," he says, slowing his own breathing. Hers is still flat and fast, pained.

He lays back down next to her, on his side, and draws her close. He reaches for her left arm, gently bringing it toward himself. Begins to massage around the elbow and lower, grimacing a little at the blood she's drawn. Superficial scrapes, but wearing her arm will be a problem until it heals.

She makes an encouraging sound when he massages a particular spot around her elbow. He can feel her heart race, her whole body is still wound up, ready for a fight.

"Harder," she hisses, and he pushes his thumb into the nerve cluster. It seems like it should be too hard, like she should be up against the ceiling right about now, but she gradually relaxes, her breath shuddering out of her.

He realises only now that he's pulled her against him, her head on his shoulder. He has his lips pressed against her temple. Just when he becomes aware of it, she presses into the touch a little, and his momentary fear that he has overstepped boundaries fades.

Furiosa's heart is still pounding, and he wonders if it's like his own dreams sometimes, where it's hard to tell if the nightmare caused the pain or the other way around.

He makes soothing noises he didn't know he still had in him, lips brushing her ear, and she turns her head into his touch and suddenly he is kissing her, her lips pliant and welcoming.

It takes a full minute of gentle, tentative lip presses before it catches up with him that he is _kissing_ her. And she is kissing _back_.

He dryly, distantly dismisses the need for his week-long campaign of trying to figure out if she ever thinks about kissing him. Here they are.

He makes a low noise of pleasure that vibrates in his chest and cups the back of her head, gently parting her lips with his tongue, letting himself sink into the kiss. He's been thinking about it so much that finally doing it, tasting her, feeling her, breathing her in, makes him feel light-headed.

 

He doesn't realise his breathing has fallen in sync with hers until she stops breathing, and he freezes.

Furiosa is on her back and he is beside her, one hand propped on the bed beside her far shoulder so he can lean over her. She has gone still, her eyes wide, and he eases off to look in her face.

"No?" he asks, with a lurch of fear in his stomach. He thought they were doing this together, but what if he just wanted to think that?

" _Slow_ ," she corrects after a long moment, and she's breathing again, she's smiling a little and breathing and he can breathe again too. He lowers himself to the bed beside her, suddenly aware he's been looming over her.

"Sorry. Sorry," he mumbles against her shoulder. "I've been.. I've been--" he shakes his head a little, helpless to articulate anything useful. " _Wanting_. Sorry."

Furiosa is quiet for a long time. Her fingers twined with his reassure him that she doesn't want him to leave.

"Me too?" she says finally, though she doesn't sound that certain. "But this is new--" her hand makes a frustrated gesture, like trying to pluck words from the air. "— _wanting_ this _._ You need to go-- slow."

He looks up, startled, and she nods. Huh. He has no idea why that surprises him. If he thinks about it, he wouldn't know when in her life – what little he knows of it – she would have had time or occasion for enjoyment.

Maybe they are reading the same book, and the thought of that makes his heart soar, but apparently she has just started the first chapter while he is remembering the story from an earlier reading.

 

The next day he almost convinces himself he dreamed the whole thing. She behaves no differently than before. Only the angry red scratches on her half-arm reassure him that it really happened.

For want of anything better to do – and that is going to become a problem soon enough – he goes back to the Repair Cave and puts himself in Marra's hands. She's happy to put him back on Engine One.

"Wait, let me assign you an assistant," the old woman says with a grin, and Max bridles – relentless chattering kids like before is not what he needs.

Marra brooks no refusal, and gestures for one of the older war pups to join them. It's a girl of maybe 11, with short, tightly curled hair and eager brown eyes.

"This is Nitro."

 

Nitro turns out to be smart, helpful and blessedly quiet. She helps, watches, hands him the tools he asks for, and her slim arms and nimble fingers can reach spots that he can't manage to rid of sand and rust. Her presence doesn't drain on him like the gaggle of kids did the day before. It's almost nice.

She watches his hands attentively, and Max finds himself unexpectedly trying to explain a few things, struggling to find words for actions and concepts that have long become automatic to him.

Sometime after the long lunch break – the Vuvalini apparently call it 'Sesta,' and it gives everybody the opportunity to get out of the sun for the hottest hours of the day – Max is on his back under the rig. Nitro is sitting beside it with one hand petting Bolt and one hand in the toolbox, handing him the tools he asks for.

At some point he hears her rummage through the toolbox before he asks for something, and then the next tool is being held out to his seeking hand and it is the torque wrench he needed.

Max shivers.

"Pliers now," he hears a soft voice when he pauses his work to reposition himself, "Yes, those."

When he reaches for the next tool without asking, he gets the right type of pliers, and he grins up at the engine block. When he's done with them he slides out from under the rig to find Furiosa sitting cross-legged next to Nitro, who looks like she's in the presence of her hero.

(Almost all the pups look at her like that, and as far as he can tell, always have. It were the pups, after all, who decided that she should be let up when they returned with Immortan Joe's body)

Furiosa has clearly just returned from patrol, her face dusty apart from where her goggles have covered her. She flashes him an impish grin.

"Take a break?"

"Just had one." He goes to look at the spare parts wall, seeing if he can find nuts and bolts in a better state that the ones he just took off the engine.

When he returns Furiosa has invited Nitro to get into the cab of the rig with her, the serious-faced girl in the drivers seat while Furiosa explains something.

 

He can't work out if it's his imagination or if she really does walk closer to him on their way to the dinner hall. Their shoulders brush a couple of times, just lightly, and every time it sends a jolt through him, a rush of awareness of her that he isn't sure what to do with. It makes his fingers twitch with the urge to reach out.

He wants to touch her, to draw her into an alcove and kiss her, but isn't quite sure if 'go slow' means he is to wait for her to initiate closer contact or not.

After dinner her eyes meet his for a long moment, and he raises his eyebrows, waiting for a question, a plan. Nothing comes - her gaze skitters away again and she turns toward Eir, who is talking with Miss Giddy about the Green Place.

When they all go up to the gardens after dinner she sits with the older women, Eir, Marra and Miss Giddy, an old Vuvalini warrior he hadn't noticed before, plus Adina and Mercy who used to be milking mothers. They settle on a semi-circular bench, and to his surprise Furiosa settles down at their feet, her head resting against Eir's thigh as she looks up at them and listens to a story.

Max had hoped to spend time with her tonight, but he can't begrudge her this. She looks.. young in a way he's not used to seeing, and peaceful with it.

"Many Mothers time," Dagne says, seeing him look. Max had joined her and the Daglet on the grass, Bolt rolling around blissfully next to them while the baby crawls around. "You can join them, they won't mind."

Max grunts and shakes his head, because this is what Furiosa must have longed for, in those twenty years away from her own people. Must have hoped for when the plan of their escape took shape. There are so few Mothers now, if there is even a small piece of her homeland she can have, he could never begrudge her or intrude.

Cheedo has joined the women, and Miss Giddy first brushes, then braids her hair while they talk. Eir is absently stroking Furiosa's head, and Max can't help a little smile when he sees the expression on her face.

 

He spends the evening talking – or rather, listening – to Dagne and Toast and Corpus Colossus, who'd been brought up in his chair. Max had only discovered during the council that Joe's son had surrendered back when Furiosa first entered the Citadel. Apparently they'd had some respect for each other before, because after a time of mutual suspicion, the man has become a valued member of the council, lending his knowledge of the trade and logistics of the Citadel and working closely with Toast and Capable.

Max only listens with half an ear, mostly occupied with little Angharad, who is crawling over his body with the same kind of determination as the woman she was named for. When she eventually falls asleep on his chest, Dagne offers to take her away, but Max just shakes his head, one hand cupped around the little girl's head and the other around Bolt, who has curled up against his side.

He watches the light fade from the sky and thinks of nothing at all.

 

It's full dark and Dagne has taken Angharad to her room some time ago when Bolt suddenly stirs and jumps up. Max lifts his head to see Furiosa crouch down a few steps away and to his side, petting a happy-wriggly Bolt.

He rolls to a sit, and realises Furiosa is watching him, her head a little tilted like she is working through a puzzle. Then suddenly she seems to find whatever she is looking for. She rises to her feet and offers him a hand up, easily helping him to his feet. Max can't help the thrill in his stomach when they walk together to her quarters, bodies close enough that their arms brush together.

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: not quite a panic attack, but Max has a bad moment here recalling his time and treatment as blood bag, and goes into a kind of disassociative state.

Their arms brush when they walk back to her room, and Max feels her gaze on him a couple of times, just briefly. She looks away before he can meet her eyes, and that gives him pause. She has always, _always_ met his eyes, whenever he sought hers out.

"Are you OK?" he asks when he's closed her door behind them. Her shoulders look tight, a little too high, and her breathing has lost the languid rhythm it had in the gardens.

She turns on her heel to face him, and the look of steely determination on her face doesn't belong here in this moment. She walks up to him, three, four of her long strides, and steps into his space. Unsettled by the return of the Fury Road in the lines of her body, he falls back a pace, his shoulders up against the rough rock wall, and she follows, crowding him.

"Furiosa?" he murmurs.

Her eyes flick to his for an instant, and then she is looking past his ear again.

"Come here..." he slowly brings up his hand and cups it around the back of her head, feeling the tension in her neck. Brings their foreheads together and just breathes.

She makes a small, confused sound, and he doesn't let go, only slides his free hand down her arm to fold her hand in his. After what feels like long minutes, some of the tension drains from her body, and her breathing slows enough to fall into sync with his.

"You looked like you were going into battle just now," he says softly.

She doesn't move, except for the way her body relaxes against him in small increments.

"He made us... perform," she finally says, with a heave of breath, like the words were a feat of power, a thrown lance.

Max tries to keep his breathing steady, giving her a rhythm to anchor to, while he attempts to process what that means.

"Perform wanting him," she finally elaborates, and understanding punches home into him. He'd thought waiting for her to come to him meant letting her dictate the pace she needed, but apparently he'd missed signals and made her feel like--

He presses a kiss to her forehead.

"I thought I was-- I was worried I would be pushing you. Sorry."

Her hand comes up to his side, and she isn't just standing in his arms now, she is holding him in return.

"No, it's—" she huffs out a breath. "I'd forgotten there's no reason for you to know that."

Max realises for the first time that with the Milk Mothers being former wives, and some among the former Wretched, there are well over a dozen women at the Citadel who share their experiences with Joe. It explains some of the conversations he's half overheard, which sometimes involved hastily wiped away tears but just as often uproarious laughter and uncomplimentary adjectives for the word schlanger.

"What do you need from me?" he asks Furiosa, stroking her neck and upper back.

"Go slow. I can say 'no'. I can say 'stop,'" she says against the side of his neck.

He gently guides her face to his and whispers "Good" against her lips, and then he kisses her.

 

They end up side by side in the bed, trading slow, sleepy kisses. His hand is tracing slow circles on her back, and she hums tiny sounds of enjoyment into his mouth, and it's perfect.

When he is about to fall asleep she turns over onto her left side, her back to him. He can't stop his murmur of disappointment. He'd hoped that would be different, that they could stay open to each other, that she wouldn't feel the need to put her back to him.

"Need my arm free," she whispers, shuffling back against him a little. He experimentally drapes an arm over her side.

She makes a soft sound of pleasure and it dawns on him that she doesn't sleep with her back to him as a shield against his touch. Maybe she never has. As he's discovering, her back is where she likes to be touched.

He nuzzles his face against her neck and sleeps.

 

He wakes up much later, when her spine suddenly tenses up, and it takes a moment to figure out what is going on. He's pressed up against her back from knees to shoulders, and – ah. Yes. His body is very much on board with the way his hips are pressed warmly against her ass.

"Be right back," he grunts, and climbs out of the bed, cursing a little when his knee buckles. He stumbles to the little curtained off alcove with the sand bucket and wash basin. Leaning against the wall he allows himself to think about the warm, heavy weight of her body against his, about the way her lips had parted under his, about the sounds she'd made when he massaged her neck.

She's half asleep again when he returns, body calmed down, and he gets back in behind her, pressing his lips against the tattoo on her nape.

Her sleep top has moved enough in her sleep that he can see most of her upper back, and the rest of the tattoo. The swirly lines over her brand form the full moon in a sky filled with a jumble of words – names. He recognises the names of Valkyrie and Mary Jo Bassa and Angharad. Below the names is a silhouette of a horizon with trees.

There is something about the tattoo and the placing of the letters that makes him look closer. He glances at the lettering from the corner of his eye and the words 'amputated' and 'infertile' jump out at him from the jumble.

He feels like he shouldn't have seen that, not without invitation, and presses an apologetic kiss to her back.

"It's a cover," Furiosa mumbles into her pillow. "You could talk to Miss Giddy about yours?"

"Hm."

He'd never even considered that. Looking at her tattoo, the idea of reclaiming that skin appeals, though he has no idea what he could put on there that would cover up what he has now.

"Don't know what it says," he admits finally. He hasn't let anybody see it, certainly not long enough to read.

She turns her head, more awake now.

"You've never – no, why would you?" she says softly. "Do you want me to..."

She offers it so cautiously that he can't help but smile, brushing a kiss to her shoulder.

"Yes."

They shuffle around in the narrow bed until she is sitting up against the headboard and he is stretched out on his stomach, shirt off, his face turned to her.

She actually sucks in a quiet breath when she first sees it, and he makes an inquiring noise.

"It's-- it looks.. you scratched a lot when it healed."

"Mm-hm," he agrees. Remembers it keenly, almost wrenched his shoulders trying to get his nails on it when it was trying to heal.

She puts her nub on his shoulder, warm and steady, and traces along the lines with her hand as she reads.

"Day 12045 - height 10 hands - 180 lbs.. that isn't very readable, you got a lot of ink off there. No name, no lumps no bumps, Full life... Clear, I think it says, but this part is.. messy."

He hums in acknowledgement, feeling far more comfortable with this moment than he ever expected to be. Perhaps it's because of the steady, matter of fact way she reads. There's no pity.

"Two good eyes, no busted limbs," her breath stutters a tiny bit, and when she continues reading he understands why, "Piss OK, genitals intact..."

He presses his face against her hip, because she can't not be aware what he just got out of bed for. And while he doesn't regret it – prefers it over making her feel uncomfortable or pressured – he is discovering that he is apparently not beyond cringing after all.

She brushes her nub along the back of his head, reassuring him the touch is welcomed, but she doesn't pause her reading.

"...Multiple scars, heals fast... then here," she draws a line with her fingers, "the letters are bigger: O-plus high octane universal donor."

Max flinches, because that is a memory he retains. Of being held by many hands, having blood drawn, of the triumphant cry of the Organic Mechanic. _Universal donor. Prize blood bag_. _High octane crazy blood_. Of being chained to the front of a car like a fucking hood ornament. So many things have become mere vague shadows in his mind, and yet he remembers every single second of being dragged behind a car while war boys threw rocks at him. Every rough, intrusive touch as the Organic Mechanic examined him.

"The last bit is hard to read. Lone... Road Warrior..."

Furiosa's voice sounds distant and hollow as she reads on. He feels like he's being held under water.

"Then something something Powder Lakes... V8? No... guzzoline No something.. something late – ah, _isolate_ something – and the last line is mostly gone."

He hums in acknowledgement, not moving. The images are pressing close behind his eyes. This was a mistake. He thought he wanted to know what it said, and maybe he did, but he doesn't want _her_ to know what it says, and now she does. The last thing he wants is for her to picture these things about him and everything they imply. He doesn't feel ready to look at her yet.

Suddenly he isn't sure if he ever will be ready again.

He's too raw, scraped open, like all his scar tissue is gone, and he thinks longingly of the open road, of only Bolt and his ghosts for company. They've already seen all the ugliness about him. He doesn't have to show them his insides and then look them in the eyes afterward.

He could go, his car is ready, nobody would stop him. He thinks, right now, that Furiosa would understand if he needed to go.

Yes. He'll get up, and then he'll leave.

Her hand lifts from his back for a long moment, and then it returns with something slippery and cool and green-scented, and her hand becomes a warm, steady, hypnotic weight moving slowly over the scarred skin of his back.

He'll get up, and then he'll leave.

 

When he wakes he is alone.

The cover has been drawn up to cover his back, and his face is pressed against a pillow that smells of her. It's well into the morning.

The relief of being alone, of not having to face Furiosa, is so great that he shudders with it. He doesn't want her to see this in him. He should never have let her look at his back.

He gets up. His head has the quiet, buzzy feeling of not quite being in the present, like he is watching a different version of himself from two paces behind his own back. Watches himself get dressed for the road. Watches himself take the backup ration of bean paste and mealworm biscuits Furiosa has in her quarters.

It's like a tunnel, watching himself walk down the long winding steps and to where his car is parked. Bolt noses at his hand as he walks, but she barely registers. Faces keep appearing before him, and he hopes they are ghosts, because most of them are bloody and he wants the Citadel to be well, he just.. needs to be away from all the people right now.

"Max!"

He flinches, but this face isn't bloody, just crowned by thick red hair. Capable reaches out to touch his arm, but drops it again when he moves away slightly, like magnets that don't like each other.

"I need somebody for a delivery, will you help?"

Max scratches his neck, looking anywhere but her face. He doesn't really want to, but isn't in any state to extract himself from this conversation, so he listens. It turns out there's a secret valley at an hour from the Citadel where they've started to grow beans and sorghum, and they need a sack of seed delivered as discretely as possible.

"There's a lot of soft sand to cross, so take a bike, and no direct routes – almost nobody knows about this place, and we need to keep it that way," Capable explains, and he isn't sure when he agreed to do this, but clearly somehow he has.

"I'll watch Bolt until you're back."

He grunts in acknowledgement, because apparently this is happening, like he has no influence on what the other self does.

Patrols are out for the day, so when he goes to where the motorbikes are stored there are only two choices. A light, mean looking crossbike that looks like it was taken from the mountain people, and has no panniers. The other one is one of the beautifully decorated bikes he remembers the Vuvalini riding.

"Come on sonny, I'll even let you drive," grins the old Vuvalini warrior who is perched on the bike. She moves back to the pillion and pats the main seat. She looks vaguely familiar, and he thinks she might be the same he saw at the Many Mothers meeting the night before, but he can barely manage to look at faces right now, so it doesn't matter. He stows the sacks and mounts up in front of her.

The bike won't start. He curses.

"You gotta jiggle it a little," the old lady says from behind him. "She's a little sticky."

He jiggles the key, and the bike starts, and when he roars through the gates and out into the desert his passenger whoops with glee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Redcirce for stuntreading, you're the best :-)


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the rating change.

He turns the hour-long trip to the valley into a meandering five hour tour, weaving between sand dunes, letting his tracks be eaten up by the wind. His passenger doesn't object, just laughs with joy every time he crests a rise in the road and the lift of their momentum makes gravity wait a moment to catch hold of them again.

He needs every one of those hours of speed and space to come fully back into himself, to feel like here is here and he is now. By the time he nears the valley and feels guns trained on him, he thinks he might be capable of a conversation.

He slows the bike to a crawl, cautiously approaching the watch post. If Furiosa organised these defences, there must be at least a long gun trained on each of them, more likely two.

Suddenly the little ghost girl darts into the path of the bike, bloody hands reaching out to him beseechingly. Max tries not to flinch, but instinctively brakes anyway. Then the Vuvalini warrior is no longer on the back of the bike but there in the sand, drawing the child away by the hand.

"Come here, baby chick," she says kindly. "Boy's gotta be able to think."

Max twitches hard at the sight of somebody interacting with his ghosts, and then, finally, looks the old woman in the face.

"Kaboom," she whispers, making a spreading gesture with her battered hands, and he remembers now.

"Keeper."

She inclines her head in acknowledgement, and then her eyes flick to over his shoulder.

"Look sharp, boy, here they come."

 

The people at the settlement are wary, but when he shows them the sack of seed they bring him to the hidden little valley. It's in a narrow gorge that must have contained water once. The rock walls are completely covered with green creeping plants.

"Kidney and Butter beans," Keeper nods approvingly.

The open space is covered with what he knows to be sorghum, and the people live in well-defendable caves.

They feed him an early dinner of sorghum pancakes and try to get news out of him, while the old Vuvalini walks among the plants, trailing gentle hands along leaves while she hums softly.

He gets a message and two large bricks of bean paste to ferry back to the Citadel, and the thought of how far he could get on those is only a flash before he remembers the sweet feeling of holding Furiosa, of kissing her. The thought of facing her is still daunting, but the overwhelming urge to run has faded with the long ride.

He still takes four hours to return.

 

The food storage quarters are closed and the people in charge have retired for the night, so he brings the ration bricks with him when he goes up to the room. The halls and passages are dark and quiet.

With his hands full he fumbles the door and it opens a little louder than he meant it to.

Max looks straight into the barrel of a gun.

"Coulda told you that, sonny!" Keeper cackles, with a swat at the back of his head. Then she's off down the hall like a shadow.

"Furiosa?" Max says softly. She's in her sleep clothes, sat upright in bed, and he can see how wide and dark her eyes are in the gloom. "Sorry for startling you."

She says nothing, not moving, for the space of long seconds.

"Can I co--"

He hears her take a deep, audible breath, like she's been under water.

She lowers the gun all at once, tucking it back under the pillow, and he watches for a few moments as her body relaxes from its fight-ready tension. He notices only now that she had Bolt pinned to the bed with her nub, making sure the young dog didn't fly at the intruder. Furiosa lets her go now, and Bolt comes to greet him, sleep-blinky and cute.

"Can I come in?" he tries again, wanting to be sure of his welcome. He doesn't quite know where they stand, after the last time they were together.

She nods, watching as he puts the bean bricks on the ledge in the wall.

"The dust, your goggles," she finally says. "Looked like a war boy storming in."

"I'm sorry."

She's told him what she had to do to escape. The members of her crew she sacrificed, and he doesn't think she could have done any differently, but he knows that's never going to sit easily with her. Ace and one of the others survived and have submitted themselves to the new regime seemingly without resentment, but things probably aren't as easy in Furiosa's mind.

Max sits down on the edge of the bed and pets Bolt, whose wagging tail seems incongruous with the tension of the room. Takes off his boots off and outer clothes.

She's made space in the bed when he gets back from washing his face, opens the blankets for him. He settles in next to her, facing her. Somehow it feels like this shouldn't be so simple.

"Are you all right?" he asks, and it sounds low and intimate in the darkness of the room.

She takes his hand and puts it against the side of her throat, and he can feel the vibration when she speaks.

"I am glad you're back. You look like you feel better."

He nods, and she continues with a chuckle,

"I am also _very_ awake now."

It takes him a moment to realise that she's letting him feel her heartbeat, a still-rapid pounding against the palm of his hand.

"Sorry for startling you."

"Mm. What's life without a little adrenaline sometimes?"

He chuckles, because she sounded like she meant that.

"I am looking forward to taking the new rig for a test ride," she confesses with a gleam in her eyes. "A bike just isn't quite the same as a 2000 horsepower engine rising under you."

Some lewd part of his brain supplies some suggestions about things they might do together that rival that feeling, and he can feel his face flush. Hopefully it's too dark for her to see. His hand is still against her throat, and he can feel her breathing and her heartbeat, neither of which have exactly slowed down.

"I'm glad I'm back too," he says, voice so low it's almost a rumble. It's true, but he maybe didn't know how glad he would be to be back until right this moment. She's so close, warm and vibrant and alive under his touch, he can't help closing what little distance there is left and kissing her.

Maybe it's what she was waiting for, because she makes an approving little noise that thrills in his gut, and kisses back with enthusiasm, her hand curving around his neck to draw him in.

After a while she pulls him over on top of her, and time seems to stop happening, everything melding together in a hazy blur of deep, heady kisses, her hand on his back, blunt nails making him shiver, the curves and planes of her body pressed under his, the feeling of her hair under the palm of his hand, the tiny whimper sounds when he kisses and nips along her neck.

At some point he becomes aware that he is mindlessly grinding against her thigh, and that things are heading into the kind of direction that he can't keep doing that for much longer. She doesn't seem uncomfortable with it, but she also hasn't made a move to touch him below the belt. Slow steps. He tears himself away from her lips with a gasp.

"We, uh – I should probably--"

He rolls off her, and she looks at him with kiss-swollen lips, her pupils blown wide and dark.

When he finally manages to make himself move to get out of the bed, her hand fists in the hem of his shirt.

"Are you going..." she nods her head toward the little alcove.

He grunts in affirmation.

"What if you--" she doesn't let go of his shirt. It's too dark to see if she's blushing, but she makes a face as if she can feel her cheeks grow warm and she's a little disgruntled about it.

He's so helplessly, hopelessly endeared by her sometimes, by this woman made of steel and blazing sun who can allow herself to be so soft for him. Right now he can't help but smile and lean back in to kiss her.

"Here?" he finally whispers against her cheek.

She hums a yes, not looking at him, and makes space for him to lie back down with his head propped up on the pillow, Furiosa close and on her side.

Max strokes himself through his underwear, needing a moment to get over the selfconsciousness of the moment.

"What did you think about? Last night?"

Her mouth is close to his ear, and the brush of her breath against him makes him twitch.

"Uh, the sounds you make.. when I kiss your neck." Among other things, but that's the one he's most willing to confess to.

Her hum is pleased and maybe a little surprised, like she was expecting something else.

"I really like that," she says, softly like it's a secret.

"I noticed that," he smiles. He slides his hand into his underwear and squeezes himself, thinking about that sound.

She hums, and then she's shifting, and his hips twitch when he realises what she's doing – leaning over to offer the back of her neck to him. Her breast is pressed against his arm, her top doing little to hide the softness of it from him, and she's facing toward the hand he is slowly stroking himself with.

Just knowing that she's looking has him gasping a little, hand speeding up.

Then her neck is in reach and he fastens his lips to her skin with a low groan. He knows by now how she likes to be touched, that too light makes her twitchy and irritable. She likes heavy and steady, all pressure and intensity. He wraps his free arm around her to hold her close, and sucks a hard kiss just above her tattoo. Her breath stutters when he scrapes her nape with his teeth, and his hips jolt, and then he bites down and the _sounds_ she is making, she straight up _moans_...

 

It takes him a while to stop gasping, to sink back into his own skin. He's licked clean his hand – waste no protein – and is caressing her with both hands now, one running idly over the short fuzz on her head, the other stroking her arm and side. She's still draped half across his torso, and he presses apologetic kisses to the teeth marks he's just made.

"Are you okay?" he finally asks, not sure if her not moving is good or bad.

She makes a drowsey sort of humming sound, and finally moves to put her head on his shoulder, so he can see her face. Her eyes look glassy, and her face is relaxed, peaceful.

"Sorry I bit you," he kisses her forehead. He'd gotten a bit carried away there.

"I... liked it?" she whispers slowly, sounding a little puzzled about it. "Made my head all..." she makes a vague gesture. "It was... nice. You can do that again."

"Yeah?" he smiles against her forehead, kisses down her nose, licks his way into her mouth, and they get lost in eachother for a while, languid now, finally sleepy.

"You can do the other thing again too," she murmurs against his lips.

 

Max tries hard to contain his restlessness, but he can feel the wastelands calling out to him again. His motivation to stay longer is helped along by nights of slow, sensual exploring with Furiosa, discovering what makes her tick. She seems comfortable enough with the idea of pleasuring him, but given how tense and uneasy she is with attention paid to her in return, he holds back. Learns to induce purrs and smiles with kisses, with careful touches.

And if they spend a little more time than is strictly effective working elbow to elbow on the rig's engines, well nobody seems to care.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All hail Redcirce for keeping up with me and helping me make this better than it was


	16. Chapter 16

Max spends the morning looking after the Daglet, but after sesta he makes his way down to the repair cave to see how Furiosa is getting on. Yesterday they were close to getting the new Rig – they're not calling it the War Rig, not this new one – running.

He's walking up to the cab when Ace corners him, backs him into the space between the tanker and the cab.

They've been amiable, so far, or at least neutral, so it takes Max a moment to catch on that cornering is in fact what's happening. He hadn't realised Ace's size – the man is usually a little curled in on himself. Apparently when he wants to be he's a head taller than Max.

He feels his body ready itself for a fight. Fuck, he's gotten too complacent in this place.

"What do you want?" he grunts

"I want to know," says Ace, looming, "If you're actually any use to her."

Max flicks his eyes to behind the guy, back to his face, and shifts. Knows there is nobody who is going to step in here, not unless it's to back up their foreman.

 _Her_ is obviously Furiosa, but it wasn't a question, and even if it had been he doesn't think there would have been a right answer.

He's shifting into fighting stance, trying to judge if Ace is the brawler he looks like or if this is going to get lethal, when the old Vuvalini warrior suddenly ducks around the man's elbow.

"Boy, don't be stupid. He just wants to know you've got her back," she says, irritated and impatient. Then she swats Max upside the head – it's no more than a brush of air, but he flinches – and disappears again. He blinks.

Ace is still watching him, with a sort of hostility that suddenly makes a little more sense. The guy is protective of Furiosa. That makes them – well Max doesn't know, but that makes them not-enemies, at least.

He grunts.

"I watch her back," he finally says, cautiously. "And when I can't, I know you will."

Ace's lopsided mouth twitches like he's surprised, and then he abruptly turns and stomps away to the entrance of the cave. Max stares at the back of his neck – Ace has a boltcutter symbol over his brand.

 

Max takes a minute to get his thoughts together. He'd thought that would end very differently, and he's not so ignorant to think it wouldn't have ended with a disappointed and angry Furiosa no matter the outcome. He knows he matters to her, but Ace has been her second for almost ten years. The two of them bashing each other's heads in would not have gone over well.

"You're welcome," Keeper says tartly from right next to him. He glances at her from the corner of his eyes. She's mirroring his stance, leaning against the tanker, not translucent, but perhaps just shy of solid. "Men and their emotions," she huffs. "Mothers forfend you'd actually try talking to each other."

"Thank you," he says softly. He doesn't have a habit of acknowledging his ghosts, but she's very hard to ignore.

She nods. "Think I'll stick with you for a while. Our girl seems fond of you."

With that she nods to the side, and Max sees Furiosa approach. When he looks back, Keep is gone.

 

"Hey," Furiosa sounds different somehow, and it only takes her next sentence to identify it. "Wanna go for a drive?"

She's got the new rig ready for a test drive, and he can read the excitement of it all through her body, like there's a wild bubbling joy moving through her limbs.

The tanker isn't ready yet, this is purely a handling test for the cab. He's a little scared at the prospect of a 2000 horsepower engine, unburdened by load, in the hands of the woman in front of him.

He's maybe also turned on.

(He can hear Keep cackle, and tries very hard to ignore her.)

 

A patrol is pacing them at a distance, but it's just the two of them in the rig as they roar down the road.

He suddenly wonders if Ace expected to accompany her. Probably. Max himself is surprised they're not taking anybody else. Their earlier encounter suddenly makes more sense.

Furiosa opens up the engines, and then they're soaring, fast enough to get a little light in the stomach when they crest a rise in the road. She's grinning, and it's hard to stop watching her face, the same intensity he remembers of watching her drive the War Rig with none of the jaw-clenching tension.

He'd known she was an excellent driver, but watching her like this, handling the rig so massively overpowered without a load behind it, gives him a thrill to his stomach.

She does brake and accelleration tests, from easing to a stop to grinning "Brace!" before stomping the brakes. Lets the rig leap forward hard enough to plaster them up against the back of the seats. Then swerve tests where he has to cling to his seat. Good thing they left Bolt with Marra.

"Needs more handholds!" he shouts, and she just grins all her teeth bare and guns the engine, driving them down a dune like she's driving a sand buggy.

Apparently he has chosen to ally himself with a maniac. Keep's ghost is laughing and whooping in the back of the cab.

Furiosa finally brings the rig to a stop and they get out to check the state of the engines, which are hot but not alarmingly so.

"Seems to be holding up well," he comments, standing a little closer to her on the wheel well than strictly necessary.

"Could stand to let her cool a bit," Furiosa says with a sideways glance at him.

"Probably a good idea," he agrees seriously. "No need to rush home."

By mutual agreement they get back into the rig.

 

When they're back in the cab they're falling into a kiss before they've even slammed the doors shut. She makes an impatient sound and moves out from behind the wheel, straddling his lap, and he can feel the excitement of driving the rig sing through her body, can feel it in the way her thighs bracket his with heated pressure. He feels like his hair should be standing on end just from touching her.

His hands are cupping her ass, fingers digging into the leather of her trousers as they kiss. She's squirming, her hips rocking in a rhythm she doesn't seem aware of. It's all a lot more keyed up than they have done before, their hearts still pounding with the thrill of the drive. He slides a hand up her spine, cups the back of her head, and kisses down to her throat, licking at her heated, sweat-salty skin, grazing his teeth over her pounding pulse.

She makes a startled little sound, and her hips start moving with more intent, grinding against him and, he assumes, the seam of her trousers. He can feel tension build in her, in the way her hand clenches on the back of his neck, keeping his mouth on her throat. She's panting now, and he makes little humming sounds against her skin, one hand still kneading her ass. Time stretches into a breathless, heated blur, and he can hear his own heart pounding in time with her heartbeat under his lips.

Furiosa gives a shocked little hiccup and buries her face into the crook of his neck, her heaving breath warm and damp against his skin, her hips losing their rhythm. She has her right arm tightly around his back, and he feels her shudder.

They both grow still, the silent heat of the desert blanketing them.

Max keeps a hand on the back of her neck, a warm touch encouraging her to stay like she is, and he lets his other hand make slow, soothing sweeps up and down her spine. He couldn't say exactly why, but she seems to need comfort, and he does his best to give it, his lips pressed to the sensitive skin behind her ear.

"Heads up, sonny!" Keep says suddenly from the back of the cab, and Max jolts, becoming aware of the roar of bikes in the distance.

It's the patrol coming back around, probably starting to wonder at the break they've been taking. Furiosa scrambles off his lap and behind the wheel, and they're already at speed before he realises she won't look at him.  
  


The drive back is sober, lacking the wild joy of before. She's driving efficiently, and once the patrol is flanking them, spends a lot of time on her mirrors. It takes him a while to realise that the patrol leader – which is Ace, unsurprisingly – is weaving and dodging around the rig because they're trying to establish sight lines and where she might need additional mirrors.

"Furiosa," he says softly when they've pulled back into the repair cave. Her metal hand is already on the door handle. "Are you.. did I..."

She glances at him, then looks away again. Shakes her head.

"I just--" she makes a frustrated gesture and drops her hand, shaking her head again.

"Do you--" he swallows, because this is the last thing he wants. "Do you need me to sleep somewhere else tonight?"

He had hoped for a quick refusal to ease his fears that this – whatever it is he has with her - is slipping away, but she really seems to consider it.

"Don't know," she finally says under her breath, eyes fixed forward on an imaginary road. "I'll tell you tonight."

 

It occurs to Max that this is what she might have felt the day before, when he was away – this fluttery thing in his chest that isn't quite sure if it's dying or not. It's a special kind of torture, and he forces himself to leave the repair cave, where Furiosa has disappeared under the rig to check the state of the engine after the test drive.

He goes to find Miss Giddy and watches quietly as she tattoos a flower shape over the brand of Marlee, one of the former milking mothers. They are chatting away, talking about the gardening projects, and don't seem to mind his company. It's strangely soothing.

When she's done with the flower, Miss Giddy takes a long look at his back and asks him about what he might like. He truly has no idea, has no strong memories or symbols he might want, like Furiosa's tattoo of the Green Place. Doesn't feel anchored enough here to consider a boltcutter symbol. She says she'll give it some thought and sketch some things for him.

 

He goes up to the gardens after dinner, not wanting to be in Furiosa's room in case she doesn't want him in her space. It's driving him a little bit crazy, not knowing why she's upset. Since that first time a couple of days ago, she'd been involved in making him come several times, seeming to enjoy inspiring him with words and sounds and touches – the last time she'd used her nails on his chest. She's been fine afterward every time, smiling, kissing, cuddling against him.

He wants to know, so he can know what to do, or what not to do. At the same time he's aware of just how grateful he is that she didn't make him explain why he needed to be away after she saw his tattoo.

Furiosa finds him up in the gardens late at night, and sits down next to him without a word.

"Hey," he finally says, his throat dry.

"Hey."

"Are you all right?"

She nods, shrugs, like she wants to be but isn't quite confident of it yet. She looks tired, and he wants nothing more than to curl up into her bed with her and hold her. He can't tell by her face if that will ever be an option again.

She takes a breath like she's about to start speaking, but then just releases it again, apparently giving up. Knocks her shoulder against his and gets to her feet.

He looks at her in surprise when she offers him a hand up, and then she doesn't let go, leading him to the room they've been sharing.

When they arrive in her room she closes the door and tugs him against her, her shoulders up against the wall. Max makes a sound of surprise against her lips, feeling both her hands pull his weight against her. He keeps his eyes open, seeks out hers, but she seems to have no trouble meeting his eyes. She's here with him, not with her memories.

Her hands roam, and after a little while so do his, and she cants her hips against him. It's good, and it makes his ears rush with relief, with gladness that what he thought was broken apparently isn't. It doesn't have the momentum of this afternoon in the rig, but that's good, to go a little slower. He's been wondering if that momentum didn't bring them a little further than she was ready for. Eventually the kiss eases off, winds down naturally, and Furiosa nuzzles his ear with a pleased hum.

"Yeah?" he asks softly.

"Yeah," she answers.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Redcirce you are a _star_


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All hail Redcirce!

Leaving was a little harder for him this time, but seemingly easier for Furiosa. He wonders if she was more confident of his returning than she had been before or if she just needed a little space. Perhaps both.

Capable had given him him a small bag of seeds before he left.

"Hemp. Trade it to as many people as possible. Tell them to grow it, collect the seed and grow as much as they can. It cleans the earth, makes it less sour."

"It you see any places in the wastelands that can support plants, plant a few seeds there too," Cheedo had added.

Max is so used to hanging on to any advantage you can get, that the concept of practically giving away something so valuable still startles him. It's a Vuvalini philosophy, he's learned. The idea that it might be possible to make the world a green place again, and that you have to start with giving.

It's not something he's able to believe in, but he does as they asked him. Trades seeds for a cup of water here, a sober meal there – just enough to make the other party understand the value of the seeds they are being given.

 

Most days he drives with his ghosts. Keeper has stuck with him, alternately helpful and deeply frustrating. The ghost girl, Glory, seems better since he gained Keep. She still whispers to him, distracts him sometimes, but she's no longer hurling vicious, bloody accusations.

He still dreams about the unborn child he thinks was Angharad's. Some things don't change.

Furiosa is there sometimes; she usually rides in the backseat with Keeper, and the two of them have conversations he can never quite understand. They're not speaking a different language, but when he focuses on the words, they seem to warp and waver and his attention slides away again.

He doesn't begrudge them. It seems to make them both happy.

He sleeps a little easier, speaks a little more. Bolt guards him at night, and the open space of the wastelands opens up his lungs, let him breathe in a way the Citadel still doesn't.

Somewhere along the road he finds a small sheltered gorge full of vegetation. These places usually have settlers, people keeping their head down and hoping nobody finds the little haven they've carved out of the desert wastelands, but this may be too well hidden even for that.

Max is deciding on the best places for the hemp seeds when he feels his neck prickle.

"Come," says Keeper from beside him, and then, when he fails to move with the alacrity she demands, thwacks the back of his head.

"I'd do what she says," Furiosa smirks, lounging in the shade. He gives her an unimpressed look. His hallucinations aren't supposed to gang up on him.

He gets up and follows Keeper to a bush on the other side of the sparsely green little valley. Not what you'd call an oasis, not as he knew the word, but a sheltered little spot that offered protection from the wind and sun and supported some vegetation.

It takes a long moment to understand what he is hearing. At first his head shoots up because droning in the distance means cars, means danger. Then, at Keeper's emphatic pointing, he realises he doesn't hear cars, but insects. _Bees_.

There are flies everywhere in the Wasteland, beetles too, and cockroaches if you're lucky – most people hunt them.

What they don't have is bees. Cheedo and Dagne and their workers pollinate by hand, with little brushes. Max takes one look at Keeper's face and knows he's about to drive straight back to the Citadel. It's been 41 days. Perhaps he was ready, anyway.

 

It's a strange drive, nursing a few bees stings (Keeper tuts at him, not in sympathy but because stinging kills precious bees) He has the honeycomb and bees in an empty water container, closed off with thin cloth so they can breathe. He stops a few times to let the bees fly and drink, but he knows every hour in that tank more are dying. Keeper hums to the bees, and he drives through a night, a day and another night.

A morning patrol spots him on the edge of Citadel territory, four bikes and a sand buggy. He stops and gets out, waiting for them to get close enough to recognise him. It's not Furiosa, as he'd hoped, though it is her bike – it's Marra who roars up close enough to talk.

"Well, don't you just look like you could do with a week of sleep, boyo," she greets.

"Marra—" he says urgently, "Bees. Um—I have. Bees." He gestures at the back seat of the car.

Her eyes widen, and turns back to her bike. "Better hurry then."

She signals for her patrol to continue without her, and roars ahead of him, sparing him the effort of trying to find the most solid path across the sand dunes.

 

When they drive up he sees that the field at the base of the Citadel is covered in tall green stalks, and he idly wonders if the places he's planted seeds will be the same in a month or two.

Max so far has always refused to have his car in the elevated garage, the idea of needing to request for the lift to be worked before he can leave makes him uneasy. This time he gives in – the less jarring for the bees, the better.

Toast is waiting for them, face grim.

"Were they attacked?" she asks Marra urgently, before Max is out of the car. There is a moment of confusion, and then Bolt scrambles out through the open window and presents herself for petting. Toast blinks.

"No news of the convoy, but our boy here found us bees," Marra explains.

"They need a special sort of box," Keeper says from the back seat. "Get Eir, she'll know."

Max hums, wondering how much of Keeper's inside knowledge he can demonstrate before people start outright avoiding him.

"They need a – a house. Does anybody here know," he gestures vaguely, "how to make one?"

 

Furiosa is away on a trade run. Max doesn't know why this surprises him, he certainly doesn't expect her to sit around and wait for him to come back. It just... feels different in the Citadel without her presence. Even if they sometimes go whole days without seeing each other, he still feels connected to her somehow, as if tethered by invisible threads.

He's beginning to learn that he never really leaves her, he just.. orbits. His travels are a trajectory oriented around the Citadel. The thought no longer unsettles him. He wonders if she's realised it too. Maybe that's why she seemed more at ease with saying goodbye, the last time.

His first instinct – once the bees are situated in the gardens – is to drive back out and return when Furiosa does. It fades when Dagne plonks the Daglet into his arms and he sees Bolt at Cheedo's feet, all three paws waving into the air as she enjoys a belly rub.

Much as he wants to see her, Furiosa isn't the only reason to come to the Citadel.

He has lunch with Toast, who tells him about the attack on Bullet Farm – it apparently ended with the remnant of the attackers fleeing back into the wasteland.

"We spent all that time worrying and it came to nothing," she says with a rueful shrug. "The convoy is there now to resupply Bullet Farm. Should be back at the end of tomorrow."

Neither of them needs to say that this means there are plenty of people around who might be desperate to score a rig full of trade goods. The run hasn't exactly become less dangerous than it used to be.

He spends the next hour with Capable, updating the map they have with the things he's found during this last expedition. Then she and Cheedo offer him a tour of what they've been working on lately.

Max considers ducking out of it, but Cheedo looks outright excited about it, and he can _feel_ Keeper stand inches behind him. The old Vuvalini says something, in her helpful elderly lady voice, about not disappointing them or she will consider staying around for helpful advice next time he and Furiosa are in bed together.

Max has never had to work so hard to stop himself from turning around and snapping at his ghosts, not even when they were screaming bloody murder at him. Most of the time he thinks this new situation is an improvement, but as he sighs and nods and the girls beam, he isn't so sure.

Cheedo and Capable take him all the way down to ground level and show him the hemp fields, which will be harvested when the convoy is back, and the places where they are already expanding the planting. Keeper makes approving noises as she examines the plants. She also talks about medicinal properties, and he thinks he'll mention that to Eir, though presumably she knows.

Max notes that there are a lot more huts down here now, lean-tos and other semi-permanent constructions that suggest that life for the Wre-- for the _People_ has stabilised to the degree that they feel comfortable putting things down instead of keeping them on their back. Capable beams when he mentions it; apparently improving the lives down here has been one of her projects.

 As they lead him around the smelters workshop and he declares himself impressed, he realises that they consider him part of all this, like he helped build it. It's a strange idea, that to them he might not be the crazy drifter who washes up every once in a while. He doesn't quite know how to feel about it yet.

Cheedo gets a promise out of him to stay long enough help with the hemp harvest, and she looks so triumphant that he doesn't bother telling her he had intended to stay for a week or two anyway.

He is beginning to feel the drive through the night, and while he can and has stayed awake much longer, the point is that here in this place he doesn't have to. When they're back on the upper levels he suggests that Bolt might enjoy staying with Cheedo, then says goodbye, and goes to crash into Furiosa's bed.

It's not as nice when she's not there, but still.

 

At dinner he sees Miss Giddy and agrees to go with her to the vault after their meal; she has drawn up some tattoo ideas for him on the wall.

"Wish I could give you something more interesting," she says with a handwave at the section of wall where he sees three charcoal-blackened patches. "But you're going to need that much black to cover those thick ugly letters. See if there's anything you like."

One of the designs has a night sky, dots left untattooed for stars. There's thin lines drawing constellations. Another design is completely black, but fades toward dots at the edges. Another fades into gear shapes on the side, smaller gears in white a little inward, breaking up the edges.

"I like this, ah, style of edging, but I don't... gears.."

"I can do that effect with something else."

"Hmm. Those stars viewed from here?"

Miss Giddy nods.

"I don't want..." he looks back at the sketches. "A map. On my back."

He's been worried enough that somebody out there is going to see his blood type on his back and decide they can use him, and that's just about _him_.

"I can take a different section of the sky, I have a book," she shrugs. "And let me think about a different edging... if you like that white space effect, I can work with that."

 

The next morning he rides out with a patrol, because the alternative is feeling Marra's eyes on him while he looks at the horizon more than at the engine repair she's tasked him with.

(Nitro looks disappointed, but he pats her head and mutters that he's sure she can finish on her own)

The atmosphere at the Citadel is tense today, everybody knowing they're expecting back the convoy but uncertain in what state it will be. The recent unrest about Bullet Farm means that there are more desperate people in the area than before.

They didn't have a full complement of trained crew for the rig, and these days every crew member counts. They don't have so many that they can afford to lose any.

It's good to be out of the Citadel and have some space around him, even if he is in the company of five others. Keeper hasn't gone with him, choosing to be in the gardens and sing for the bees, apparently. He's almost tempted to whoop in her stead.

They're parked at a high dune at the far edge of Citadel territory, letting their engines cool a little, when Many, the patrol leader, takes a step forward and shades her eyes.

He gives a questioning hum and joins her, because she obviously sees something in the direction of Gas Town.

"Is that a dust plume?"

He stands behind her, unsnaps the looking glass, and follows the line she points.

"Looks like."

The thrill in his stomach can't decide if it wants to be anticipation or anxiety.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you complain that this chapter lacked shippiness, know that the next chapter is 95% shippy


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is mostly smut. I wouldn't say it's super explicit, but if you're uncomfortable with people getting naked together and thoroughly exploring eachother, you might wanna give this chapter a miss.

It takes two hours for the rig to become visible with the naked eye, at least for Max. Many apparently has uncannily good eyesight; when he's only just seeing the shape of the rig properly, she's trying to count how many crew are on top.

(He's learned that she used to be a lower level breeder, and that her name refers to the amount of babies.

"Probably a bunch of the pups are mine," she nods, seeing him think it through. She starts up her bike, effectively ending the conversation, and they ride to where they can wait to escort the rig.)

Max can see the metal arm resting in the open window drivers side, and knowing Furiosa is at the wheel lets him breathe a little easier. They fall in well ahead of the rig, providing an escort for the last twenty minutes. He's not sure if she recognises him or if it's just a greeting to the patrol, but the rig horn sounds low and rousing as they roar out ahead, making his heart beat a little faster.

 

Max has just parked his bike when Furiosa jumps down from the cab with a face like thunder. She is in full Imperator's regalia, which he know she dislikes. Blackened forehead, and the sigil with the chains hanging from her belt. Unlike he remembers, it's not Joe's flaming skull but a newly made boltcutters sigil.

Before she's taken two steps, Ace blocks her path.

"Boss," he says, urgent and close. "Let me sort them out."

She doesn't stop, in fact makes as if to walk straight through him, and Ace clamps his hands firmly onto her shoulders, holding her in place. Her hands go to his wrists as if to break his grip, and Max is fairly sure anybody else would find themselves on the ground, but she lets Ace speak.

"I've got a better angle at this, boss. Let your Ace handle it."

After a long moment she lets out an angry huff of breath, her teeth gritted. Apparently he takes that for acquiescence, because he knocks their foreheads together in what is perhaps the war boys version of the Vuvalini greeting, and steers her away from the rig. And, not coincidentally judging by Ace's quick look to Max, also in Max's direction.

"You deal with the trade books, Boss, and your visitor. I'll square this away."

Max sees exactly when his presence registers – it takes a long moment, like she can't quite figure out the context where he fits. Maybe doing this run, working with her crew, has thrown her back to the time before, and he sees every inch of her the Imperator she must have been.

Behind her, Ace bellows,

"ALL RIGHT YOU SCROTES! HOW MANY CREW DO YOU SEE HERE, HUH? YOU SEE ANYBODY WAITING TO TAKE YOUR PLACE? EXACTLY! NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK THE IMPERATOR WILL PREFER – WITNESSING YOUR GLORIOUS DEATH OR CONTINUING TO HAVE A CREW?!"

 

Furiosa doesn't touch him, just sweeps him up in her wake and seems to know he follows. He's already doing it before he's even aware of it.

She's walking with long strides, bootheels ringing on the rough hewn stone, and she doesn't lose steam for the long, long climb up the stairs. Max shivers a little.

Whatever anger she had seems to have worked out of her by the time they get to the upper levels, at least mostly. She pulls the black neck scarf off and wipes at the Imperator's black on her forehead.

"Wash. I want to wash." Her voice sounds like she's gargled sand, tight and rough, and he just nods.

She leads him not to the communal washroom near her room, but a floor up and into a side corridor. It's smaller, with a deep round bath hacked out that could be shared by perhaps five people. There's a black hose led in from the ceiling, and he discovers the water in the bath is lukewarm. The hose must be laid out into the sun.

She puts a bar over the inside of the door and begins to unbuckle her arm. When it drops, he can see the aches in her shoulders and neck, the way the weight of it has dragged on her, and his fingers twitch, wanting to ease it.

She strips down methodically, and he's caught in a strange stillness, not quite sure if he is meant to see her but unable to look away. They have not been naked with one another before now. He had imagined it would not be so practical when they finally did.

Her body is lean and hard, scars testament to the life she lives. He smiles at the way her torso is pale, the contrast with her arms and face. Her belly has the slightest bit of soft to it, and he wants to press his face there, that pale, most vulnerable spot of her.

He realises she is looking at him with raised eyebrows, and he shakes his head ruefully and begins to take off his leg brace.

While he undresses she draws a jug of water and begins to wash the dust off her skin with a wet cloth. The pool is such a luxury, he understands, they need to be clean before they go in.

When he is naked too, he finds another cloth on a ledge and follows her example.

She scrubs hard at her skin, until she is flushed with it, but he can see how she comes back to herself, relaxes with the process. Finally she leans against the wall and watches him wash, and he can feel himself stir at the way her eyes trace over his body.

When he is done with the cloth he pours the remaining water slowly over her bent head, so she can rub ochre mud from it, and then they are both clean.

His fingers twitch in surprise when she steps up to him, cups the back of his head, and presses their foreheads together. They've spent a good part of the past hour in each other's presence, a large part of it naked, but only now he feels like she's fully here with him.

"It's good to see you," he murmurs, and she angles her head to kiss him, slow and heady. Max finally allows his hands to come up, to trace up her arms to her shoulders, then slowly down over her back. He's trying to keep it light, to not pull her naked body against his. He's still not sure what happened, last time.

"Is this all right?" he whispers, worried for a repeat of her previous upset.

She is quiet for a long moment, as if she's carefully considering his question.

"M-hm," she hums finally. "I had never-- and certainly not with—with somebody there."

Something about that makes his heart _ache_. He wants to go back into her past and-- he wants to hold her close and-- he wants to--

"I needed more time." she gestures vaguely, "after."

He hums in acknowledgement. She'd had to scrape herself together far too fast after what he understands now had been such a new, vulnerable moment for her.

He catches her eyes and looks over at the bolted door. Nobody is going to disturb them here.

A small smirk curls her lips as she catches his implication, and she takes his hand to draw him over to the bath.

 

The water is lukewarm, and the pool has a ledge for sitting on, so they're immersed to their shoulders. While he moves slowly in wonder at the feeling of water all around him, she lets herself float on her back for a long moment. Her head drifts close to him, and he gives her a smiling, wet, upside down kiss. She kicks off against the far side of the pool and surges closer to him, sleek, wet skin sliding against his, and he almost shudders at the sensory overload of it.

They trade deep kisses and slow touches for a while, until he knows he needs to focus on her for a while, to let his own body cool back down.

"Can I-- try something? For you? Something nice?" he asks, and his voice sounds _wrecked_.

"Yes?" she doesn't quite sound sure, but she's flushed, leaning eagerly into his touch, so he thinks it might work. He sits her on the edge of the pool, and she looks down at him so trustingly that he struggles to breathe for a long moment. Then he runs his hands from the outside of her ankles up to her hips while he leans up to kiss her. She kisses him hungrily, hand in his neck, urging him close. When finally he kisses along her jaw and down to her breasts, she makes an encouraging sound.

He teases the pert nipples and feels her hum in pleasure when he sucks them gently, tenses his tongue to flick at her nipples. Her back arches into it with tentative shocks, like her body knows what it wants and it's taking her by surprise. This is new, he reminds himself. God, he wants to show her _everything_.

Finally he sinks lower into the pool and gently encourages her to open her legs.

Her knees spread easily, and he can't help but watch her reveal herself. He wants to taste her so badly that his mouth is watering a little just at the thought of it, of gently spreading her and getting his tongue on her. But when he makes to lean closer he hears her make a startled little noise in her throat and her legs press back together, powerful muscles in her thighs bunching.

He looks up, and her eyes are squeezed shut, her hand twitchy on his shoulder.

"No?"

It takes her three attempts to get sound out. "I'm—I don't want-- looked at," she manages finally. "Examined."

He hums in understanding and draws her off the ledge and back into the water, so she might feel less exposed. He firmly dismisses the thought that there must be a position that works for her, because he can already feel Keeper stir with helpful suggestions and he needs his head here, he needs to fix this.

He draws Furiosa into his arms and presses kisses to her forehead, the bridge of her nose, her lips. After a moment he can feel her shift gears, the brief, unexpected body memory pushed down. Her hands begin to trace him again, exploring the planes of his muscles, the sparse hair on his chest.

"Not with another person, hmm?" he rumbles after a while, recalling her words.

She draws back a little to look him in the eyes, her hands still roaming his back, and her eyes are huge and blue.

"May have... tried some things, while you were away," she says impishly, and he groans because the mental images are immediate and he can feel himself twitch where he's pressed against her belly.

"Yeah?" he murmurs against her ear. "Can I see?"

After a moment of consideration she moves to sit in front of him on the ledge, between his legs with her back against his chest. Their lack of height difference means he can't actually see far enough over her shoulder, but this is even better because he can let his hand rest on the back of hers as she she slips it between her legs. She hums approvingly as he lets his fingers shadow hers, learns how she touches herself.

She's not gentle with herself. Her fingertip makes hard, focused little circles around her clit, and it's like she's gunning an engine, driving her body from zero to sixty. It takes what feels like a very short time before her torso rocks forward, and she gasps sharply, two, three times.

Max lets his free hand trail gently over her side, her back, while she catches her breath. Leans in a little to kiss the nape of her neck, and waits until she is ready to uncurl, to open back up.

Finally a shiver runs through her spine, and she hums and twists to kiss him.

It's a hungry kiss, enthusiastic and heated, as if what she's done is whet her thirst instead of slaking it. The energy of it buzzes through him, makes him draw deep breaths through his nose, as if preparing for something.

She draws her hand out from between her legs, but he leaves his own hand there. When she turns to face away from him again and squirms her hips as if to get closer to his hand, he slips his fingers to lay against her clit.

"Can you go again?" he murmurs against her ear, and she makes a sound as if she has never considered this but is intrigued by the notion. He grins. "Let's find out."

He feels the jolt in her body when he gets the touch exactly right, like an engine thrown into gear, but he doesn't fang it. He rubs slow, gentle little circles until she is inhaling sharp, audible breaths, then eases off again. He places a broad fingertip over the hood of her clit and rocks it lightly. His other hand traces over her breasts, until she clamps her hand over his and makes him give her some pressure.

She alternately tenses and relaxes, now forcing breaths through gritted teeth, now melting against him.

"Easy, easy," he murmurs, smiling at the nail marks she's going to leave on his right thigh. She makes a little whining sound and her hips make tiny, involuntary twitches, like her whole body is gearing up to throw itself into this.

"It's okay, that's where we're going, I promise."

He's trying to build her up gradually, build up a good head of steam. He wants to give her something new, something she hasn't felt yet, he doesn't think. His free hand strokes along her head, over and over, encouraging her to tip it back onto his shoulder, and he presses kisses against her temple.

"Max..." she whispers at some point, "Max?" and it's desperate and pleading and with maybe just a hint of fear of the unknown.

"I've got you, I've got you," he murmurs against her temple, and lets his fingertips finally gain the pressure she needs, tips her over the edge he's been inching her toward.

Her back arches, her body a long, open line against him, and she lets out a ragged, gasping cry, her body pulsing against his fingers.

When she subsides she is shaking, a look in her eyes like she's _lost._

"Hey... hey..." he murmurs, drawing her in. "Come here..."he pulls her sideways into his lap, cradling her close. She tucks her face against his hair.

He runs slow, firm hands over her back, her sides, her limbs, for what feels like a long time. When after a while she hums and pushes into his touch, he uses his nails, drawing slow lines over her skin, letting her feel her own edges.

Eventually she shivers, her spine arching under his nails, and she makes a small, pleased hum, like she's found a way to cover her raw nerves back up, like she fits back inside her own skin.

"Yeah?"

"Mm."

She slips her hand into his neck and pulls him in for a languid kiss, her body almost humming with content relaxation.

He eventually draws her out of the bath, steadies her when her knees wobble. She leans against him, hiding a tiny giggle against his neck while he pats her dry with one of the coarse cloths. He can't stop smiling.

 

Once in her quarters he offers her a cup of water and then steers her onto the bed, where she sprawls out, smiling vaguely at him. Max joins her and can't resist the urge to kiss her soundly.

"Feeling good?" He knows she does, but he wants to take this moment and fold it away, tuck it somewhere behind his heart, have it with him so he can take it out and look at it.

"Mmm," she hums, curling into him. She makes a sound of pure comfort. "Feel niiice..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Redcirce for making sure the story I am telling actually matches the story I want to tell.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes with profound thanks fo Bonehandledknife, Redcirce and Spatz for helping me get unstuck. You guys are better than Write Or Die :-D

Furiosa gets a very significant look from Dagne when they go to breakfast the next morning. Bolt had spent the night in her and Cheedo's room, and is ecstatic to see Max again.

Dagne looks from Furiosa to Max and says, "About damn time."

He makes his best 'I have no idea what you're talking about' face and stuffs his mouth with bean paste.

(It's apparently not just  _ his _ gaze that paints Furiosa as particularly lovely and unusually smiley, today)

 

The harvest takes two days, heavy work in the blazing sun. Having so many people around him for all day is just as exhausting as the actual work he's doing.

Furiosa seems to know, because she gives him space, demands little interaction from him, even though she's the one person he feels he can cope with. She's made sure that there are rations in her quarters, which he gratefully makes use of when he isn't up to going to the meal hall.

After the first harvest day, Furiosa pushes him onto the bed on his stomach and sits astride his thighs, putting deep, relaxing pressure on his back muscles with her hand until he moans and shivers.

Keeper cackles from the window ledge, and Max thinks 'Oh for fucks' sake, go sing to your bees' at her.

The hand on his shoulder stills, and Furiosa moves to sit upright. Max groans.

"Yeah, you said that out loud," she says, somewhere between amused and hesitant. She lets herself drop to the mattress at the side of the wall, so he's looking away from her, and pillows her head on the back of his arm.

He wonders how the hell he can explain this without sounding dangerously unstable.

"You don't have to tell me," she says softly.

"But you're curious?" He's a little amused despite himself. Keeper is still sitting in the window, looking exceptionally pleased with herself.

"Mm."

"I see-- my mind-- the people who've--" he growls, glad he isn't looking at her. He's not sure he wants her to see his face right now. "Hallucinations," he finally gets out. "They're usually, ah, memories. Of people."

She hums in acknowledgement, pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

"But this is... Keeper. Of the Seeds. And she--" he sighs, beyond exhausted by this conversation. "she tells me things I never knew."

"She's a spirit?" Furiosa murmured.

"She's a nosy old lady who keeps trying to give me advice on when we're, uh—"

"That sounds like Keep. She's laughing right now, isn't she?"

She is.

"Keep, could you give us some time alone?" Furiosa says softly, and Max blinks, because this was not-- he thought she'd think-- "I'm really glad you're looking after Max--" 

He makes an indignant sound, because  _ hello-- _

"--but we just need some time together right now."

Keeper gets up from her perch in the window and approaches. Max holds his breath as she leans in, and from the corner of his eyes sees her brush a kiss over Furiosa's forehead. Then the old Vuvalini leaves through the closed door.

"I'd forgotten about that," Furiosa mumbles. She sounds suddenly choked up, and he moves to face her. She closes her eyes and nestles against him, her face in his neck. 

"Forgotten about Keep?"

"About… about spirits. The Vuvalini have stories about this, but I--"

He can feel his skin grow damp with silent tears. 

"My mother," she whispers finally. "She stayed with me for a long time. When I was in the--until I became a War Boy, and I…" she heaves a deep breath. "I don't think I even noticed at the time."

Max wonders if Furiosa can see Keeper, on some level. Now he thinks of it, he doesn't think she's ever walked through his ghost - or talked through her. Maybe Furiosa can't see Keeper the way he can, but he's pretty sure that at some level she is aware of her. 

"--I just thought that… that spirits couldn't stick around forever." Her voice sounds small and sad. 

He hums, cupping a hand around the back of her head. Idly rubs his thumb against her short hair. There is so much inside each of them, so many hurts stepped over and shoved aside because they couldn't, they  _ couldn't  _ at the time. He supposes it's a good sign that they can, now. 

"But-- but maybe…" her breath hitches. "Maybe she knew I--" she's silent for long minutes, and he focuses on making his own breathing deep and slow, give her something to cling to. "--couldn't be a War Boy while I was," she chokes out, "Vuvalini on the inside."

He wonders who they might have been, in another life. If they would have connected like they did, without his blind desperation and panic to get away, and her instinctive understanding and willingness to give him things so he could calm down. He likes to think they would have understood each other in every possible version of themselves, but sometimes he isn't so sure. 

She finally sleeps, exhausted. Max wakes once, deep in the night, to find Keep sitting on Furiosa's side of the bed, humming softly to her. 

***

His car is still in the upper garage, and he is deeply regretting that by the end of the second harvest day. He needs to get away so badly he can taste it. He's already picking a Vuvalini bike with panniers for Bolt when he realises he wants to get away from the Citadel, not from Furiosa, and finds a War Pup to send for her.

She gets down to the garage a short time later, carrying a jug of water and a ration pack.

"Want to come for a ride?" he asks, and her expression does something, and-- oh. She thought he was leaving. "It's ah, a nice... a nice night."

Bolt submits to being tucked in the panniers, and a few minutes later they're roaring across the moonlit sand.

They stop finally on a tall dune, and sit quietly next to each other, throwing the rag ball for Bolt.

Furiosa lets herself drop back into the sand, staring up at the night sky. Max wonders how often she's come out here just to soak up the space and the silence. Not often, he'd wager. As far as he can tell, her life at the Citadel under Joe had no time for such things.

She fumbles at her belts, unbuckles them without looking down. When finally they drop away and she shrugs out of her metal arm, she breathes in deeply, like it's the first time she can do so freely. He'd noticed that she doesn't tend to wear her arm when she doesn't need to, but he hadn't realised that the belts might feel restricting.

He listens to the gloriously clear, smooth way her chest expands with her breathing, and lets it banish from his mind the memory of her rasping, rattling dying breath. She is here, this is now. And in this now Furiosa spreads her arms to the side, arches her back a little, and yawns so wide her jaw crackles with it.

She looks open and relaxed and-- Bolt comes racing up and drops her ball on Furiosa's stomach, making her laugh. She throws it down the dune without looking.

Max shifts toward her and pulls her head into his lap, and she makes a happy little noise as he pets her hair.

"I worry, when you leave," she says, after a long, comfortable silence.

He hums in acknowledgement.

"Not even.." she sighs. "Not even that something will happen to you. But that I-- that I won't  _ know _ ."

He knows better than to tell her soothing nonsense. It's not an unreasonable fear and they both know it.

"I worry about you," he says instead, what feels like a long time later. "About the Citadel."

"Yeah? I have help. We have defences." She sighs, shrugs a little. "You'd think there'd be a lot less to worry about, wouldn't you?"

"You'd think," he agrees. 

***

The next day he goes to Miss Giddy. She shows him book with the night sky she wants to use.

"They are called the Pleiades. The sisters. Shall I read you the story?"

Max grunts, shrugs. His main concern is to cover the letters that declare him a thing, that might – if seen – inspire somebody else to nab him and keep him as bloodbag. He won't be able to see the tattoo himself, so he doesn't much care.

Until she shows him the white space edge she designed for his tattoo, because suddenly it matters that this is what Furiosa will see. Suddenly it matters a  _ lot _ .

The bottom edge will have the silhouette of the Citadel. It's not very detailed but instantly recognisable for anybody who has seen the Citadel rocks, and Max thinks about being declared – declaring himself? – so explicitly as belonging there. It's a startling thought, at first, but he takes a moment to let it settle. 

Likes it?

Likes it. 


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Max gets tattooed and it causes a pretty serious panic attack. I don't think it's very graphically described, but if you're sensitive to this sort of thing, please beware.

Actually sitting down for Miss Giddy is… he has to force himself to unclench his hands, to stretch out his leg, to breathe. To take off his shirt. She gets ready her things, sterilises the needle in a flame, takes the jar of ink.

"I'm going to put letters over these letters first," she explains, "so that you won't be able to read them as ridges later. Like this, it will just be a jumble."

He hums, thinking about how many new tattoos he has seen on people here, about how much experience she has gained in covering ugly things as effectively as possible. 

Her bony, wrinkled hand rests on his shoulder, not to keep him in place but to steady herself, he thinks, and then the machine comes on and--

 

"Steady, lad," Keeper says from beside him, and he blinks, looking at Miss Giddy from the other side of the room. He hasn't hurt her, thank whoever might be listening. He'd just bolted. 

She doesn't look as if this has phased her in any way. He supposes the reaction isn't exactly new to her. 

"I like her," Keeper grins. Max thinks they would have gotten on well, in a terrifying sort of way. He wishes - not for the first time - that Keeper was alive, and that he wasn't the only one who could see her. 

Max takes a deep breath, forces himself to walk back over to Miss Giddy. 

"Melly," she calls, and a woman appears from the inner room in the vault. Max hadn't even noticed somebody was there, and he's a little disturbed. He really should notice these things. 

Melly is large and soft-looking and has a brand new baby in a sling against her body. She has a tattoo of a flowering creeper vine across her shoulder and collarbones, and writing all down her right leg. A new History Woman in the making, perhaps? 

"Do you need help?" she asks. Her voice is low and pitched in a don't-wake-the-baby sort of tone Max tries not to recognise. Anybody else and he might have thought 'help' was about holding him still for the needle, but Melly so obviously isn't here for that, he begins to breathe again. 

"How is your little one?" Miss Giddy asks, gesturing for the woman to sit down. She lets herself sink cross-legged onto a pillow, and a moment later Max realises he's sat down too. Keeper gives Miss Giddy an impressed look.

Miss Giddy rummages in a crate with her supplies, and then comes up with a cable that has a little box with a dial. She hooks it into her machine and gives the box to Max to hold.

"It's an interruptor," she says, and Max shakes his head - he knows what it  _ is _ , it's just slow to register what it's  _ for _ .  "Turn it on when you're ready to start. If you need me to stop--" 

He thought he'd grown used to it with repeated exposure, but it still catches Max by surprise sometimes, the breathtaking  _ kindness  _ of these people. How have they managed to retain it under Joe, he doesn't understand. How the harshness of this life has allowed them to nurture it in secret, like a seedling in a skull carefully tucked away in Keeper's bag, just waiting for the opportunity to take root in fertile soil… 

He coughs, because it's better than sobbing, and nods at the old woman. Turns his back to her. Takes a couple of deep breaths and realises Melly has started to feed her baby, such a contented picture that he feels his heart rate slow down. 

He turns the dial. 

 

He doesn't know how much time passes before he turns the machine off again, but he's drenched in sweat, his clothes and hair soaked with it, and he's shaking so hard his teeth are chattering. Miss Giddy and Melly are chatting, which helped him last as long as he did, but the grip on his shoulder had been getting stronger to keep him steady. 

"If you weren't gonna stop, I would have," Miss Giddy says, wiping at his back with a cool rag. It feels like she's gotten about halfway the text. 

"What did you write?" Melly asks, and Max blinks through his haze. It hadn't occurred to him that she might write something rather than just put random letters. 

" _ History, despite its wrenching pain _ ," Miss Giddy traces along the raw skin, " _ cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be _ \-- well, I didn't get to the end, but the last words are  _ 'lived again _ '"

Melly offers Max a cup of water, and it takes him a long moment of staring to figure out what to do with it. His hands feel numb. His teeth click against the earthenware cup when he brings it to his lips, and he spills a little. 

 

"...and she's been sleeping so well," Melly is saying. Max becomes aware he's been hazing out, last time he saw she was feeding the baby. Now his sweat is cooling on his body - somebody has covered his shoulders and back with a light linen cloth - and the tiny girl is laid on her back on the woman's legs, burbling happily, arms and legs waving in the air. Keeper is sitting next to them, offering her finger for the baby's to grab onto. The little girl keeps following the ghostly fingers. 

Melly is massaging Miss Giddy's right hand.

"And Grind? What does he think?"

"He's still… getting used to the idea of claiming her, bein' involved," Melly says, mouth twisting. "Won't hold her. Ain't exactly like any of 'em know how to be a father."

"Looks like this one knows though."

"Do you want to hold her?" Melly says, and Max startles at being addressed, pulls back the hand he'd been offering to those wavy little hands. He'd been trying to tempt the baby away from following Keeper's hands, idly competing for attention. 

"No, I--" he shakes his head, backing away from the baby a little. "No."

"All right. Do you want to come back tomorrow for the next part?" Miss Giddy gestures at his back. 

At this rate he's going to have a month of daily sessions. Max grimaces.  
"Can you… hm, can you cover over all the letters now?"

"The first layer," she nods. "There's gonna be a second layer of letters, so you really can't read 'em anymore, and then I'll start filling in."

"Finish, mm," he takes a gulp of water and shakes himself. "Finish the first layer?"

He figures he's probably going to have a bad night, remembering a cage and his burning back and neck, so he's keen not to have to do this any more often than needed. 

He doesn't go as deeply into his own head this time, because he keeps his eyes fixes on the baby. His back  _ hurts  _ and the machine makes that  _ sound  _ and the needle  _ buzzes  _ and the vibration goes through his spine he can feel it in his skull in his feet in his  _ lungs -  _ but there is a baby, burbling happily, waving her hands in the air at the wizened hands of a ghost and she is being sung to by all three the women, she's content and safe, and that helps somehow, that anchors him. 

He's still a wreck when Miss Giddy is done. She wipes down his back with something that stings, and reads to him:

" _ History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again _ ," She reads, her finger trailing lightly to indicate where the words are. "And then here: " _ We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there." _

Keeper chuckles, apparently recognising the quotes, and Max nods. They won't be visible anymore once the rest of the tattoo is done, but in some ways they'll always be there, and they're  _ good  _ words, he likes the idea of carrying these words with him. 

When he tries to get up his knees buckle, and Miss Giddy hums for him to stay seated. 

"Get some soup in you first, lad." she says. "And let me cover this for you."

She has a flask full of cold salty broth for him, and while he managed to drink some, she smears a thin layer of greenish salve onto his back, then covers him with gauze. 

"You should keep it bare and clean and dry as much as possible, but I'm guessing you weren't gonna walk to your room without a shirt," she says. 

He grunts, because she's got that right. It still makes him a little twitchy when Furiosa looks at his back, let alone anybody else. 

 

She finds him in her room an undetermined amount of time later, wrapped tightly in a blanket with his back against the wall and Bolt watchfully in front of him. He flinches at her shadow, and he can't read what her expression says, her face is a haze of something angry, or sad, he doesn't know. 

"Do you need some time?"

Her hand reaches out slowly, and he backs further against the wall, but she only pets Bolt. 

"I'm going on patrol tonight. I'll see you the morning, all right?"

He doesn't answer, he  _ can't _ , and her face twists with something he can't identify, and then she leaves him mercifully alone. 

 

That night  he sleeps just long enough to wake himself with a choked off scream. The scent of the Citadel, the soreness on his back, the sounds of people everywhere - it's too much, and he needs to  _ go _ , right now. 

His trembling fingers discover that the backup rations in Furiosa's quarters have now become a full 50-day ration pack and a 25-liter tank of water and a packet of seeds, and it's a trap, it  _ must  _ be, so he bolts out the door without any of it. 

His car is still in the high garage. He can't leave. Surely there's a bike down below he can take, something,  _ any _ thing--

_ Max, stop running! _

He blinks to feel Bolt butt her head under his hand, like she does when she desires petting immediately. He's not in any state to resist, so he stops walking and pets her, scratching at her ears while she leans trustingly into his legs. Then Glory is there, and she takes his other hand and leads him up the stairs. 

Up in the gardens the breeze is cool on his sweat-soaked skin, and Glory takes him to a sheltered spot. He sits down without any decision to do so on his part. This is all wrong, he was  _ leaving-- _

"Hush, sonny, you can leave in the morning," Keeper says.

Bolt wriggles her way into his lap, and Max doesn't know what else to do, so he sits there and waits for the sun to rise. 

 

"Hey…" Furiosa finds him up there, the first rays of the sun behind her as she stands there, making her short hair look like a golden halo. She crouches down just out of reach, like she doesn't want to crowd him. Bolt whines and crawls to her for petting, and Max reaches out a hand to her. It's not Furiosa he's running from. 

He lightly tugs her to sit down next to him, wraps his arm around her. She slowly lets her head tip against his, and they don't say anything until the sun is well in the sky. 

"Do you need me to get your car ready for you?" she finally asks. "I can send for you when it's on the ground."

He presses his face into the side of her neck, his eyes squeezed shut, uncertain what to do with the rush of  _ something  _ inside of him, the way his head goes light. 

"Please."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With my thanks to the invaluable Orbit Witness Crew: Circe, Bonehandledknife, and Spatz :-)


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting stories is easy but finishing them always besets me with anxiety, which is why this took a while! Thanks to Redcirce and Spatz for absolutely vital ninja-wrangling and Bonehandledknife and schwarmerei1 for being the Orbit cheering squad.

It takes six days for him to feel at home in his own skin again. On day seven, his back feels almost healed, no longer weeping with lymph or sticking to the clean, soft shirt Furiosa put into the car for him. It still gives him bad moments when it itches, because he remembers his hands being bound and being unable to scratch, but he mostly feels human again.

He's driving around the mountains, set on a trajectory that should - maybe, possibly - bring him past a few valleys where he thinks plants might grow. He's passed a few places in the first few days where he planted Hemp the last time, and it does indeed seem to be taking root.

On day 17 he's in a small settlement that's having its market day. People keep looking at Bolt as if she's food - he supposes she would be if you're hungry enough - so he has her tucked into the front of his jacket. She's a little too big now for that to work, but it beats feeling like she might get snatched away from him.

He's just finished haggling over how much Hemp seed should buy a meal - the stuff is going to lose its value in a season, if it keeps growing wild, but he knows that was always the plan. Maybe the Sisters will have a new type of plant for him to spread by then. 

As he turns around, he flinches, because she's striding through the crowd exactly like he remembers her from when they set out, dark hair long and wild, black feathers widening her shoulders. He's been back to that place, he  _ found--  _ she can't have,  _ after-- _

It's a tall, slim man, and there's some type of dark fur or hair at the collar of his jacket. It's not her. 

It's not Valkyrie.

Max curls a protective arm around Bolt and flees through the crowds away from that place. 

He doesn't stop running until the settlement has long disappeared behind him.

* * *

 

He spends days exploring the craggy outcroppings of the mountains, seeds hemp where he thinks it might take. Finds a few small, craggy trees Keeper gets very excited over. She makes him collect seed pods from the one and talks him through how to take cuttings from another type of tree, how to put them into a container of the soil there so they'll keep, and she cooes over them when he's driving. 

On the 23rd day - and when did he start thinking of his travels in terms of 'days out from the Citadel'? - he's letting Bolt have a run when the young dog starts digging intently near the top of the next dune over. They're days away from anywhere and anyone, so he's a little slow to react when he hears Keep shout and then suddenly sand is sliding and--

He had no idea he could still run this fast, his bad knee will be screaming later, but right now he doesn't care because  _ Bolt--  _ Bolt was visible one moment and gone the next, and Glory is screaming  _ Hurry Max  _ _**HURRY** _ _! _

Keep steps in his path before he gets very far, and he knows he could go through her, is tempted, but he doesn't want to, and slows - good thing because the sand is still sliding, unstable.

_ Stop!  _ she shouts, and he does, his legs responding to the authority in her voice.

_ Do you want to fall in too, sonny?  _ Keep says.  _ Ain't no use to anyone if you get stuck down there. Not like I can throw you a rope. _

A rope, a  _ rope  _ \- he runs back to his car, drives it closer, tries to find the balance between caution and speed. He has a coil of rope, a precious possession, and ties one end onto the trailer hitch. Keep makes an approving sound. Then he takes the rope and walks to the gap in the sand. The little sunlight that reaches down shows only a heap of sand in the hollow space that's three, maybe four metres down.

Glory is still screaming, but he doesn't hear any barking.

Keep is already down there, pointing to a place in the sand.

_ She's here, sonny, hurry. _

He has to swing himself on the rope in streams of sand to come down well away from where Keep is pointing, and then he's digging, shifting the loose sand as fast as he can. Glory is on her knees next to him, digging and crying because her arms go right through the sand without moving any.

After what feels like far too long - though not nearly as long as it would have been without Keeper pointing exactly where he needs to be - he finally finds the dog's head. When her face is clear he shoves hard at the sand that's pinning her body, and finally pulls her out.

She whines weakly and the tip of her tail wags a little. Her midsection seems sore, and he's pretty sure she has a bruised ribcage, but she's breathing, she's trying to lick his face. Max crashes to the sand and presses his face into her sandy fur.

 

He doesn't know how much later it is when he becomes aware enough of the screaming pain in his knee to finally move, but there's a lot less light coming down through the ceiling gap now. Keep is sitting next to him, petting Bolt's ears and humming softly.

He finally looks around. It's a long space, only a few paces wide, and there's a heap of sand covering the floor from their entrance, but there's... furniture? Not like he knows it, not anymore, but what he can only think of as old world things. Cushions with leather around them. Wood - wood! - boxes. Cabinets?

He fell in through the roof of some kind of boxy house?

_ It's a car _ , Keep says,  _ a house-car. Looks pretty intact. _

He just blinks at her for a long moment, mind still slow with the fading panic attack.

_ Shame there's no way to take the whole thing, _ she says, taking it in critically.  _ There's nice stuff in here _ .

"We can mark it," Max grunts, mind calculating distances. He's taken his time to get here, but he's no more than 5 days drive from the Citadel, probably less. It might be close enough for Furiosa to want to send a team.

Bolt whines, and Max realises his own tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth. he's been down here for hours, and his water is in his car.

_ Bed's comfy _ , Keep says from the other end of the space, but Max already knows he needs to sleep in his car. It's too enclosed down here.

He gently puts Bolt down, and she limps around slowly while Max looks around for things he'll want to take. There's fabric everywhere - hanging from the walls, covering the seats, sheets and blankets on the bed and extra in a drawer. He spreads one of the blankets and begins stacking things onto it. There are plastic jugs, a cabinet full of worn but serviceable clothes, bars of soap, first aid things, a sewing kit - needles and thread fine enough to use as sewing thread are always hard to come by. He finds a dozen other things he knows will come in handy at the Citadel, and leaves behind dozens more. Hopefully they'll be able to come back and get the entire vehicle. If not, he'll come back here to stuff his car full with more. 

He tucks Bolt into the front of his jacket and scrambles up the rope, keeping his head tucked down over hers to avoid the streams of sand his motion causes. When he's on steady ground, he pulls up the bundle of salvage he'd tied to the end of the rope.

_ I'm sleeping down there,  _ Keep says.

"Do ghosts even need sleep?" Max wonders out loud.

_ They do when the bed's this soft, sonny! _

* * *

  
It's the evening of the fourth day-long drive when the Citadel comes into sight. Max doesn't know how to feel about the way his heart lifts at the sight of it, how his foot grows just a little heavier on the gas. He's stopped by a patrol but quickly waved on when they see him, and that too feels strange and perhaps frightening and yet good.

Bolt, sleeping on the pile of blankets and clothing in the passenger seat, sticks her nose out of the window, perking up a little. She's moving a little easier, but nowhere near her usual energetic self. 

The small lift gets lowered when he drives up - the treadmills for the massive lift platform are only manned for a short time each day, but the small one that can take eight people - or one bike - can be operated with just six people on the treadmill.

Ace is standing on the platform together with a slight looking Warboy with identical, slanted chest scars. Max vaguely remembers him as Sprocket.

Max exchange grunts with them in greeting, and they help unload the salvage onto the lift.

"What's with the dog," Ace says, frowning at the way Bolt limps.

"Discovered this stuff, got into a sandslide."

Ace tsks, gently nudges Bolt closer to the middle of the platform, and the other Warboy crouches to pet her. Ace strikes the chain of the platform twice. After a moment they hear a shout from above and it begins to rise.

 

Max scratches at Furiosa's door until he hears her voice, sleepy but not alarmed. She looks curled up and cozy, blinking at him and reached out a languid arm to him with a sleepy, smiling "Heyyy…"

He doesn't go over to kiss her immediately, even though his fingers are twitching to hold her, and the sight of her sleepy and at ease does something with him he can't quite name. It's like a game he plays with himself, denying himself to make it all the sweeter when he's finally ready to go to her. 

Bolt slowly goes to her and whines, and she wakes up a little more, inspecting the dog.

"Is she okay?"

"Got caught in a sandslide. I think her ribs are bruised."

Furiosa makes a sympathetic noise and helps the dog onto the bed, to Bolt's customary spot behind her knees. Then she watches as Max puts down a container with cuttings on the window ledge, plus a cloth bundle of seed pods. 

"Olive," he grunts, and "Golden Wattle," because Keeper seemed to consider that important. 

Furiosa smiles, and he tosses the nicest sheets and blanket he'd found on the foot end of the bed. Ace and Sprocket had taken the rest off to the office to get sorted out tomorrow. 

"You don't have to bring me things to be welcome here, you know that, right?" she yawns. 

He grunts affirmatively, surprised to find that yes, he  _ does  _ know that. He's not entirely sure when he started knowing it, but he does. 

She watches from the bed as he sheds his dusty outer clothes, her eyes gleaming in the sparse moonlight that comes through the window.

Max finds he's smiling.

He quickly washes his face and hands and then, finally, slides into bed with her, into her embrace and the happy little murmur sound that makes his heart soar.

"Hey," he smiles against her temple, when he's finished kissing her hello.

"Mmmm."

* * *

 

When he wakes it's to Furiosa's lips on his throat, trailing soft kisses. He shivers as his body comes to life under her touch, lets a hand sweep idly up and down her spine, then further down over her backside. She rolls closer and kisses him, breasts pressing against him, and he hums, there's something he needs to remember, her nails scrape shivery lines of fire down his chest and--

"Mm, Furiosa," he murmurs, dragging his mind to the surface with great effort. "Wait…"

"Do I need to tell Keeper to buzz off?" she whispers against his throat, and a laugh startles out of him. Keeper isn't there - probably spending time with Eir or Marra or both. 

"No, I'm…" it takes real work to concentrate when she's in his arms like this. "Found a house-car about four days away." He hums, suddenly not sure why that had seemed urgent. "Brought a, a  lot of things. Hmm, Ace brought them to the communal room last night."

"Okay," she says reluctantly. She looks at the window to judge the time and makes a disgruntled sound. "I should go to council, then. Now."

She climbs over him, giving him a kiss in passing but shrugging off his half-tempted touches. 

"Why did I…" he asks the rough-hewn ceiling, yawning. "Why? Did I think that was, ah, important?"

She grins at him, shrugging into her clothes, and he stretches out, limbs comfortably heavy, not feeling compelled to get out of bed just yet. He reaches down to pet Bolt, and the dog crawls up to put her head on his chest, and dozes off like that. 

Max can take a hint. He doesn't even notice Furiosa leaving the room.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for taking so long with this final chapter. Finishing things - committing to the final shape of a story - is really hard for me. 
> 
> You have the marvellous Redcirce to thank for seeing this now and in the shape it is in. Without her help it would have taken at least another week - more likely two - of screaming and resentfully ignoring it. Also cheers to Bonehandledknife for cheerleading and ceilingcatting when it was needed.

"When are you going back to Miss Giddy?" Furiosa asks over dinner.

"Mm. Maybe tomorrow? Day after?" he hedges. "Want to spend some time with you without, ah.." he gestures vaguely with his fork. Without being a wreck. She nods.

"I've been... looking forward to it," she says with a glance at him, and she might be blushing a little, and _oh_ \-- he's been so busy and distracted that he honestly hasn't thought about that much, but now…

"Are you, uh," he tries very hard to ignore Keep's shit-eating grin, but she's _right there_. "Doing anything after dinner?"

"Got one of the irrigation pumps apart, need to put it back together," she says, and he starts to nod in acceptance, because just because he's here doesn't mean she-- "I shouldn't be more than an hour though."

"Oh." He scrapes the last stew out of his bowl. "Do you want, mm," he glances up at her and catches Keep nodding emphatically. "Want some company?"

Her smile is like the open Wasteland all around him.

 

The pump is up on the West terraces of the Citadel, and he sits contentedly in the late sunlight, handing Furiosa tools as she puts the irrigation pump back together. She's bent over her work, a little sweaty, and her long, elegant neck keeps drawing his eyes. He remembers the first time he thought about licking the sweat from her neck, how stunned he'd been with the inappropriateness of the thought.

He _wants_.

He leans in, until she can feel his breath on the damp skin, and she stills. He takes a deep breath, revelling in the scent of her, and then he traces a broad, flat tongue up over the bumps of her spine, to that little divot between her tendons. The salty tang of her sweat busts on his tongue, and there's a _clank_ as she drops the wrench she was holding. He's not thinking at all, just acting on impulse as he mouthes her neck, grazes her with his teeth and then gives her a slow, careful bite that makes the breath rush out of her audibly.

He backs off slightly, just breathing her in, and she makes a soft, breathless sound. She's not moving at all.

"Hey..." he asks.

"Nnng."

He might have been concerned if she weren't leaning into his touch, so he lightly chafes his hands over the outside of her arms until she stirs.

"That," she finally says, and her eyes are a little glassy, her face is a little flushed, "was just _rude_."

He hums in agreement, unrepentant.

"Fix your pump," he nudges after a moment, grinning.

" _Rude_."

He can tell she needs to take a few deep breaths, gather her concentration, before she's back on track with the work he interrupted. Then, because now he's started touching her he can't really help himself, he puts his hand on the nape of her neck, lightly traces the flushed, damp skin, the faint teeth marks he just made.

She lets out a soft, growly sound of frustration, and a second later he's on his back in the grass, her metal hand on his shoulder, keeping him pinned with her weight. She leans in to kiss his throat, and he shivers and tilts back his head.

She makes a pleased little humming sound and sucks a leisurely kiss over his pulse point, and he has never heard himself make the sounds that seems to be coming from him right now. She works her lips and teeth on the skin of his neck for a while, to under his ear, and when she straightens up to go back to her work he's just staring up at the evening sky in a daze, her pushed 'stay' command entirely unnecessary.

 

Later, in her quarters, they've taken the rare, indulgent time to wash, wiping down each other with a damp cloth. Max feels shivery and new as the light breeze dries the dampness on his skin, and he stretches out on the bed on his back, gestures for Furiosa to come into his arms. She straddles his hips, settling on top of his hard length, pressing it down against his stomach, and they spend a long time kissing like that, her hips making tight little twitches, her wetness slicking against him.

"Can I-- please," he gasps, when he can can't stand it any longer. "My mouth on you?"

She sits up a little, looks puzzled, and he gives a gentle, guiding tug on her hips, pulling her up toward his face.

She looks uncertain, but she moves.

It takes Furiosa a moment to find a position that's comfortable, a balance that works as she hovers over him. She looks incredible like this, and his mouth waters at the closeness of her. He mouths at the startlingly soft, pale skin of her inner thigh, marvelling at how somebody so hardened and scarred can also be this warm, soft, quivering woman against him, and how much he wants both of these sides of her.

"Please," he rasps, forcing himself to leave his head on the bed, to not lean up and begin before she's ready. He slides his hand up and along her arm until he can tangle their fingers together. Furiosa breathes easier for it, finally nods and lowers herself to his mouth.

 

She's lying on his chest, tremors still running through her body, and he understands this now; understands that she needs a little time to shore up her edges, get her boundaries back in place. He just strokes her back with slow, steady passes and waits for her to feel less naked.

When he feels her calm, feels her settle back into her skin, he makes his hands a little less neutral, rakes her lightly with his nails to make her wiggle. Lets a hand drift down to her backside to knead, gratified when she gasps a little. She's no longer lying still on him, slowly undulating under his touch, her hips rocking encouragingly into his touch. She moves to slide one thigh in between his, and then they're grinding slowly, lazy and delicious.

"Max--Max, don't make me beg," she whimpers into his ear, after what feels like a long time.

He blinks and looks at her, only slowly remembering what she'd said about being made to perform sex and desire. Did the old bastard make them beg for it? He tries to shove away the thought and kisses her soundly.

"Sorry. Didn't know if you'd want--something in you."

She grinds down against his hard length to make it very clear that's what she wants, and then with a hook of her leg and a hand slid behind his head, she rolls them so he is over her. He reflexively supports his weight on his elbows, hearing for a moment a sound-memory of her rattling gasps, but she pulls him down onto her, and he reminds himself that her ribs have long healed, that she is breathing smooth and deep, and that she knows her own strength.

"Come on, come on," she murmurs against his lips, and she is warm and wet and eager against him, and he aligns them and oh--

"Oh _God_ ," he chokes out, because the _sound_ she makes, low and satisfied, the way she feels around him as he slowly sinks into her, the way she wraps her powerful legs around him--

"Move, move, _move_ ," she whispers, no breath behind it, and he rolls his hips, makes them both groan, and the _heat_ of it, their skin sliding together, the way she's gasping softly with every push, the way her nails rake over his sides, his backside, he leans up a little and slips his hand between them, gets his thumb just right, and she _arches_ , and--

 

Max is still on top of Furiosa, held there by her encouraging hand in his neck. He has his forearms under her, bracing his weight a little so she can breathe.

"Hmm?" he asks, "Okay?"because he thinks she is, but it's not enough he needs to hear he needs to _know._

" _So_ okay," she murmurs, laughs a secret little laugh, and the relief of it rises to his head, bubbles up in him, makes him light-headed and giddy.

"Good. I'm glad," he manages breathlessly, and then he's chuckling into her neck, so relieved and pleased and helpless with it.

 

"This is healed nicely." Miss Giddy lightly traces her fingertips over his back, and he tries not to twitch away from her touch. She'd already set up her equipment, he has the interrupter box next to him. Bolt is curled up in his lap. Melly is reading in a far corner, Keeper hovering over her shoulder - apparently one of the most frustrating parts of being a ghost is that you can't turn your own pages.

It hadn't been easy to bring himself to the vault, his body half turning toward other directions at every intersection. He is dreading the sound of the machine, the feeling of the needle, but he pets Bolt and reminds himself that he'll be rid of the bloodbag tattoo if he can just stand this a few more times.

If he manages to stay in the Citadel, it won't even have to take more than a week or so. He has left his car ready in the ground level repair cave, but the plan is to stay. Maybe it'll be easier this time?

"You got another, mm, wordburger to put over it?"

"A bit of song, though we don't know the melody," Miss Giddy says. " _Settle down, it'll all be clear. Don't pay no mind to the demons that fill you with fear. The trouble—it might drag you down, but if you get lost, you can always be found."_ she pauses. "How's that?"

He hums approvingly. They aren't words he would have chosen for himself, but something within him resonates with the thought that Miss Giddy wants to give them to him, for him to carry on his skin like a benediction.

She has just finished the first letter when Ace walks in. Max immediately hits the interruptor. Ace waves in a vague 'No, don't get up' kind of way and Bolt squirms out of Max's lap and goes over to greet the man.

Max feels a little shaky with the adrenaline from the tattooing, and the urge to cover up his back is strong, even though Ace is in front of him and can't see it.

"Boss said t'ask ya about the place you found all that shine stuff."

He absently pets Bolt's head.

"You want I should come back later?"

It occurs to Max that if he is going to keep coming back to the Citadel, he should probably learn to work with Furiosa's second.  
"It's, mm, it's all right," he says finally. Maybe the distraction will help. "Got something to.." he looks back at Miss Giddy, "something to write on?"

"There are slates over there," she gestures Ace to the big blackboard.

A few minutes later he is trying not to flinch as the needle goes back onto his skin, and Ace sits within arm's reach, at an angle so he isn't blocking Max's sightline on the doorway.

"It was, uh, a house-car?" Max tries to explain. "I think people used to.. just.. drive around in them."

"Was it deep under the sand?"

"Kinda… halfway a dune. Recoverable, I think." He tries to picture it. "If you've got.." he licks his lips, "a lotta people."

"People we got," Ace shrugs, and Max realises he's right - with the wretched now just 'the people,' better fed and building housing for themselves, they have a lot more people available for work.  

Bolt settles back into his lap, and Ace asks,  
"Can you draw a map?"

 

Max is staring at the piece of chalk in his hand, trying to remember how many foothills he'd been able to see from the place, when he notices Ace looking at him. He glances up, and Ace... grins, then looks away. Huh.

Max pulls up an eyebrow. Ace hums and brushes his hand over a spot on his own neck, close to the scars where they've removed his lumps. Max tilts his head, puzzled, and copies the gesture, blinking when he touches overly sensitive skin.

Oh. _Right_. Furiosa had given that bit of skin a lot of attention, it must be a bruise.

He gives Ace a 'what of it?' kind of look, and the other man shrugs, still looking amused.

 

It takes a few hours afterward to get the sick, shaky feeling out of his limbs, but he doesn't feel as bad as he'd feared. It helps that he can go to Furiosa's quarters and hide away until he feels ready.

That night she takes him to one of the Vuvalini bikes, gestures for him to get on behind her, and races them along the moonlit dunes until he feels like he can breathe again.

 

Three days later he still isn't sure if somebody - Furiosa? Miss Giddy? has spread the word that he needs company, or if people have caught on that he is a captive audience during these times. They are polite about it, each offering to come back some other time if he doesn't want them there. To his surprise, it isn't as difficult as he'd have thought to have somebody else there while he sits for Miss Giddy. It maybe even makes the tattooing easier, not giving him space to focus on his bad memories. It makes him feel oddly… cared for? In a way that isn't entirely comfortable - it isn't safe for people to care about him, not for him and not for them - but gives him a sense of warmth in his stomach anyway.

Dagne sits with him one session, grinding herbs while they take turns drawing on a slate with the Daglet. Another day Nitro and Marra come in with a project Nitro is working on and wants his opinion on.

Keeper sits next to Marra, who is smiling, watching quietly as Max and Nitro are bent over the mechanical ankle she is building, trying to find the exact range of motion it needs. The girl is growing like a weed, not far from her Warboy initiation now, Max thinks. He wonders how the new Citadel will handle that, if she will go up with the others for positions like driver, lancer, repair boy and greenthumb. Judging by the nature of the project she's brought to him and the way Marra seems to have taken Nitro under her wing, he suspects she is headed toward a position as the infirmary's special mechanic.

Toast and Capable come to tell him about a project the Sisters have started together; apparently the soil he brought back with the cuttings is sweeter than anything else they've seen.

"We're trying to keep track of the acid levels," Toast explains. "And how they're affected by what grows. We can already see that the second planting of hemp is doing better than the first."

"So it's, mm, working?"

"It'll take years before it'll sustain anything but the hemp, but…" she nods, consideringly. "I think so."

"We only have the soil from around here," Capable says, "and we would like more data. When you go, would you take samples for us from different places?"

He's enjoyed the task of spreading the hemp seed; it gave his travels a feeling of purpose that he liked. So he nods.

 

Dagne drops by the next day to give him a leather bound book for writing in, and to explain exactly what they would like him to record. When Miss Giddy takes a break so Max can massage her hand, Dagne asks if she can see his back.

She'd be the first person - aside from Miss Giddy and Furiosa - to see it. He shifts uneasily, and she hurriedly says he doesn't have to.

"s.. s'okay," he mumbles finally. It no longer is a symbol of his torture. That was the whole point of covering the words.

"Oh, _Max_ ," She gasps softly when she sees it.

 

"Cheedo, umm," he starts two nights later, pulling Furiosa closer against his side as they lay in the grass on the South tower. His back aches and the tremors haven't quite faded; this final session had Miss Giddy working on a part directly over his spine, and he'd felt the vibration and the scraped nerves _everywhere_. He slowly flexes his feet, trying to shift the burning under his soles. "She told me a story…"

"Hmm?"

She rubs her cheek against his shoulder, languid and a little sleepy against him. He smiles up at the night sky.

"'bout the stars on my back. The, mm, Pleiades."

Her hum sounds interested, so he finds himself continuing. "It was about seven sisters, though one of them was.. lost." his voice drops on the last word, thinking about Angharad, just like Cheedo had. "There was this hunter.. Orion. He hunted them. Hmm. Seven years. Until somebody helped them and made the sisters into birds. Then there was.." he swallows, still not used to speaking so much. "Artemis. Goddess of hunting - she shredded Orion."

He can feel Furiosa's smile against his shoulder, and he wonders if Cheedo has read the story to her, too. Probably. Perhaps when she'd still been recovering. He presses a fond kiss to her forehead, and she makes a pleased little sound.

On his other side Bolt gets to her feet and stretches luxuriously, yawning and making little groaning sounds. Then, when neither Max nor Furiosa seem to be taking the hint that she thinks it's time to go to sleep on the bed inside, she flops back down in the grass with a sigh.

Furiosa muffles a giggle against his shoulder, and Max thinks about the cold settling into their bones and the way his back aches and the woman in his arms and Keeper trailing her fingers along new leaves, and he thinks about the endless night sky, and thinks this is probably a lot like what happiness feels like.

He isn't going to stay at the Citadel. It's sometimes still startling to feel welcomed, to know that when he is away there is an open space waiting for him to fill it again. He has never even contemplated staying and he knows Furiosa wouldn't ask it of him.

He's going to keep leaving.

The plan is just to keep coming _back_.

 

* * *

 

 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for going on this journey with me and trusting me to drive the rig! I hope you all ended up in a Green Place with this story :-)

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is currently an All Mad Max All The Time fest, [come and talk to me!](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Orbit Variations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4785800) by [redcirce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcirce/pseuds/redcirce)




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